


30 Days of OTP

by wintergrey



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:19:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 50,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've failed miserably at the cute 30 Day OTP going around. So I made my own list. I'm randomly rolling to get a prompt and working on it. We'll see how it goes. </p><p>My prompt list: http://wintergrey.dreamwidth.org/15168.html</p><p>09/03/13: This is now a complete first draft of a novel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blind Man's Bluff (#17. Playing Cards)

Things were remarkably—no, disturbingly—quiet at the safe house. Gunfire rattled in the distance. A video game was paused on the flat screen TV in the shabby open-concept living area Cougar and Jensen were calling home, the mute symbol flashed in the lower right corner. It hadn't been the distant sounds of gang violence or the rare rise and fall of a siren that had woken Cougar. It hadn't been the video game. The quiet had shaken him right out of sleep.

He prowled a few steps deeper into the living area, hand on the gun shoved into the waistband of his jeans. He'd been on his feet maybe twenty seconds and sweat was already beading under his arms and trickling down his ribs. A curl of slightly cooler air touched his cheek and he tracked it back to the open balcony door. Outside.

It wasn't really dark at night, even out in the slums where streetlights were a pipe dream. The ambient orange halo from the city dimmed the stars and weakened the night until it was a sullen ghost of its former self. A single candle flickered in a green jar on the rusting patio table, shedding its own little circle of light.

Jensen was slouched in a lawn chair held together with twisted wire coat hangers, flipping cards onto the the tabletop. Solitaire.

"Playing with yourself?" Cougar took his chances and hopped up on the crumbling railing, facing him. The suggestion of a breeze tickled the sweat on his bare back.

"Usually am." Jensen scraped the cards up off the table in one motion and clumsily jammed them together, forcing them back into the basic shape of a pack. He looked old in the wavering light. His scruff and stubble had become a beard, his cheeks were hollowed out.

"Hey." Cougar swiped the cards from him. Easy even on a good day. "You can't complain if you never ask." He shuffled the deck quickly, settling the cards into place, then put it down on the table. The dark and light masks on the back of the deck stared up at him.

"Two of hearts. Roque had the two of hearts," Jensen said. He passed Cougar a card off the top of the pack. "Pooch had the three. You had the eight of spades."

"Don't remember what you had?" Cougar slapped the card to his forehead.

"Didn't look."

"Two of diamonds. You owe me that piece you took off that General. I won that game."

"Except I hawked it in Bolivia to pay for food." Jensen pulled a card off the deck but didn't put it up.

"So what are we betting?" They didn't have much. Waiting on word from Clay here in Puerto Rico wasn't supposed to turn into two weeks getting by with odd jobs, two weeks turning into three.

"I didn't know we were playing." Jensen slouched down further in the chair and, grudgingly, put the card on his forehead. Jack of Hearts. Damn it.

"If I win, you shave." Cougar put his hands on the table, ignoring the way the metal creaked. "It's like living with that guy... the one who went to sleep."

"Rip Van Winkle?" Jensen snorted softly. "If I win—" He stopped and gestured vaguely. "I don't know. We call it even on the last game."

"If you win, I'll play that stupid game in there with you. Super-Shooting-Fast-Driver or whatever it's called."

"Bullet Drive. And I will kick your ass." Jensen narrowed his eyes as though he was trying to suss out Cougar's end game. "Blind Man's Bluff is like the opposite of real life, you know."

Jensen was smart. He didn't always come across that way, and Cougar knew that had to be deliberate. But Jensen was painfully smart, at least about most things. He made jumps that left Cougar backtracking in his own head. "It is?"

"Yeah." Jensen pointed at the card soaking up sweat on Cougar's forehead. "I can see your card. I know what you're holding. Can't see my own."

"Any time you want to see my cards—" Cougar pulled the card down and put it on the table, face up, gesturing for Cougar to do the same. "—you ask. I'm not hiding anything."

Jensen put his card down but he was looking at Cougar's face instead, studying him with calculating intensity that made Cougar feel like the man on the wrong end of a sniper rifle. Then, finally, he glanced at the cards. Jack of Hearts. Nine of Clubs.

"Guess I better get inside and kick your ass." He held out his hand to Cougar, who took it and pulled him to his feet.

"You have to shave first. Even though I lose." Cougar couldn't get past the beard, now that he was paying attention. "Enough things are wrong without you wearing roadkill on your face."

Jensen picked up the cards and gave them to Cougar. "Fine. But if it turns out this was actually my lucky beard and you didn't let me keep it, I'm going to be extremely disappointed. This took me nearly two months."

Cougar looked down at the cards in his hand again. Jensen must have found them in the box with the video games. They should have been thrown out. Maybe burned. If he let himself, he could remember that day by the river with the same perfect clarity as Jensen.

Blind Man's Bluff. Roque's cards had been in plain sight all along. He'd just been playing a different game. Cougar turned toward the city, bending the deck between his thumb and fingers until the top card slipped and they flew out into the half-dark like birds. A rare breath of wind caught them and carried them far away from each other.


	2. Classified Information (#7. Lost and/or stranded)

Cougar wasn't talking. Not in his usual way. Jensen found Cougar's usual silence comfortable, a blanket of unspoken things that calmed his thoughts when he got jumpy. But this was not a good silence. This was the silence that reigned when Cougar was not-saying what they were both thinking--something was wrong.

Jensen took the eggs off the heat and started portioning them onto tortillas, on top of the cheese. He folded them, three of them like every morning, and stacked them on a plate with a scoop of fresh salsa on the side. The newspaper rattled as Cougar turned the page. Jensen didn't have to look to know it was the help wanted section. He poured Cougar a cup of coffee, then brought his breakfast over.

"No email?" Cougar didn't look up.

"No." Jensen felt like crawling out of his skin. "Cougar."

"You should eat." Cougar started in on a tortilla. Even the lines of his bare back radiated unnatural calm.

"Cougar, this isn't good." Jensen threw himself into the chair across from Cougar, then had to tug the paper down to see his face. Cougar looked back at him, unblinking. "Fourteen days overdue."

"Clay said it might take a while." Cougar glanced down when he said it, though, and Jensen knew he hadn't just been making up the stuff about Cougar being worried, too. "We've waited before." He nodded toward the stove. "You need to eat."

"It's different this time." Jensen got up because Cougar was just going to drill him with that near-black stare until he did.

His skin stung after peeling away from the cracked vinyl of the chair. Five in the morning and it was already hot. Still hot. There was no milk. Nothing more perishable than cheese. The fridge wheezed and struggled all day long just to keep things a little cool, except for on the top shelf where everything froze solid. Jensen poured himself coffee, which Cougar refused to give up in spite of the heat. Sweat beaded on his forehead when he took a drink.

"Because it's just us," Cougar said, without turning around. He was looking across the apartment, out the dirt-clouded windows. "Remember that month in Germany?"

It had snowed non-stop. Everyone had complained non-stop except Clay, who'd taken to the snow with goddamn irritating glee. Thirty-five days waiting, then on to Russia and another wait for the submarine. The time hadn't felt like anything, though. When they'd been together, waiting had been like pain, simply something to endure. Now, every minute, every paper cut, the cramp in Jensen's back from sleeping on the couch, everything ate at him.

Everything's wrong. Jensen wanted to say it out loud but he couldn't make himself put the words into the world. Besides, he'd just be stating the obvious. Making noise. He knew. Cougar knew. Why say it? Don't you ever shut up? Roque had wanted to know. He'd been happy. He talked a lot when he was happy.

Cougar's glare was as good as Clay's sharp whistle when it came to getting Jensen's attention. He looked up from the black mirror of his coffee to see Cougar holding out the plate with half his breakfast on it.

"I'll make some later."

Cougar's right eyebrow quirked almost imperceptibly.

"You're the one looking for work. You need to eat." Jensen was trying to build a passcode breaker that would do the trick once they got information on their mark. He was working with the safe-cracking equivalent of a Commodore-64, though. There was a lot to be done.

Cougar was unmoved.

"I'm not hungry, Coug."Still, he took the plate and picked up a half-eaten tortilla, dipped it in the salsa, and took a bite. "Happy now?" he asked with his mouth full.

"Yes." Cougar folded the paper in four sharp moves, set it aside, then brought his empty cup the the sink. They had exactly one and a half sets of dishes. Jensen hadn't opened the cupboards since he'd lined them with foil to cut down on roach traffic. Everything was either standing in the drying rack or in use. When Jensen finished the last of breakfast--he must have been hungry because it was gone fast--Cougar took the plate from him to wash it as well.

"Go shower."

"I will later." Jensen stared at the fridge to remember where everything was, then pulled it open and plucked out the rice and beans before too much cold could get out. "I'm making your lunch first." He wasn't going to mention that it was one of his favourite things to do on any given day.

"We'll be fine." Cougar reached past Jensen--the kitchen wasn't more than a couple feet of counter and a sink between the stove and the fridge in the main room of their apartment--and grabbed a dish towel from the hook Jensen had stuck to the side of the fridge. "You and me."

Jensen nearly took a slice off of his thumb instead of the tomato on the scarred plastic cutting board in front of him. "Yeah," he said, making the cut carefully this time. Something loosened up in his chest. Cougar leaned in fast, his sweat-sleek shoulder pressed against Jensen's, and filched a slice of tomato. "Hey!"

Cougar gave him an innocent look and did it again, getting clear before Jensen could rap his hand with the flat of the knife blade. "What?"

"That's your lunch." Jensen took the dish towel away from Cougar and flicked him with it, barely catching his belly as he danced out of the way. "Get out of here. God, you are such a pain in the ass these days. How come you're not a pain in the ass when everyone else is here to see it?"

"My reputation," Cougar said, laughing. He stepped into the bathroom but left the door open and Jensen could see him standing in front of the mirror, braiding his hair.

"What, and you don't care if I think less of you because you're secretly nearly-almost as bad as I am sometimes?" Jensen wasn't sure whether or not to be grumpy about that.

"I do." Cougar twisted an elastic around the end of the braid, then popped open the medicine cabinet, tilting the mirror so they could see each other in the reflection. "But you won't." He winked at Jensen.

That made Jensen feel a little bit good about the two of them being stranded here. "I promise not to tell."

Cougar pulled on his work boots as Jensen packed his lunch box. "Thanks."


	3. Old Dog's New Trick (#18. Bad habits)

Cougar had nightmares in which he couldn't move. He'd be frozen in place, watching a bloody scene unfold through a rifle scope. The scenes changed but the paralysis never did. All he had to do was twitch and he'd stop the bleeding, stop the killing, and he couldn't. He could only watch.

When he woke from one, the details fading as his eyes opened, he still couldn't move. The coal-and-sulphur night had lightened to the dirty peach of sunrise behind the faded sheet draped over his window. He inhaled to remind himself that he was still breathing and forced his body out of its frozen sprawl across his sagging bed. It took two tries but he finally rolled over on his side.

It had been nearly twenty years since he'd worked construction like he'd done all week. No weekends here, not for the poor. And, until Clay came around, they were poor. Beyond the half-open bedroom door, water ran into the coffee pot, a spoon rattled against the bottom of the coffee can. Jensen was up, he never missed a morning. Funny how him being a lazy kid had been a joke for so long.

Having someone just eight feet away seemed to make everything hurt worse. Cougar reached down to peel the tangled sheets off the broken blisters on both feet. Breaking in work boots was a bitch. His hands weren't much better. Just doing that much left his right palm wet as the scabs cracked. He'd done a good job of keeping up a front so far but somehow, in the night, he'd lost it.

Bare feet on the scarred linoleum, elbows on his knees, Cougar sat on the edge of the bed and watched the light get strong enough to cast shadows as he waited for his willpower to override his physiology. The blisters would turn to calluses, the searing aches to muscle, the sunburn to weathered tan and deeper lines around his eyes. He'd just gotten soft. Or old. It had been easier to get past this stage when he was younger.

The pipes rattled as Jensen turned on the shower for all of a minute, long enough to run the rust out and wash the sweat off. The noise shook Cougar into pulling a paper bag from the pharmacy out from under the bed. Bandages, gauze, antiseptic. He just needed to slap some on and then he could get dressed, get his damn boots back on.

Cougar hadn't counted on how stiff and clumsy his hands were, how damn hard it was to bend enough to get the bandages on his feet, how the antiseptic cream that seemed to get everywhere made the adhesive on the bandages useless so that they peeled away as soon as he thought they were in place. Crumpled paper and limp, ruined bandages littered the floor around his feet. Biting his lip in frustration cracked it and he tasted blood.

"Yo, Coug." Jensen's cheerful voice might as well have been a grenade going off, the way it made Cougar jump. "Sleepin' in?" The door swung open with the bump of Jensen's hip and then he was looming large and real in the closet-sized bedroom.

"You don't knock?" Cougar snapped. Through the tangled bars of his limp hair, he saw Jensen recoil and reverse like he'd stepped on a hot plate. "I'm coming."

"Shit." Jensen switched the cup of coffee he held to his free hand, shaking off the spill and then wiping his reddening hand off on his faded shorts. The morning sun made his shower-damp skin glow and picked out the details of his muscles shifting with every move. "I'm sorry, I figured you might be tired and--"

"I'm fine." Cougar got frustrated with the recalcitrant box of bandages and dumped them out on the bed to get the one he wanted. "Just. Go play a game or something. Don't worry, I won't get fired my first week. I know better." He expected the door to creak shut on Jensen's muttered 'sorry' and hurt puppy expression.

"Fuck you, you're fine." Jensen put the coffee cup down on the linoleum hard enough that it sloshed again and a trickle began to work its way along the alarming slope of the floor. He started picking up the discarded bandages and wrappers with sharp, angry motions. When Cougar met Jensen's eyes, he found a hot blue glare that rivalled Roque's angry looks. "Your feet are ground beef and you look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The stoic act is really hot and I'm super impressed but, fuck it, Cougar. It's just you and me right now. You can't even ask me for help when you're the one making sure we have a roof over our heads?"

Cougar was working on an answer for that but by the time he came up with an opening, Jensen was gone again. Cougar sat there and listened to him bang around in the kitchen like a one-man percussion session before he had a go at getting up--he wasn't sure why. Maybe to go apologize or something. He'd made it to standing, every muscle shrieking in protest, when Jensen blew back in.

"Sit the fuck down."

Cougar wasn't sure when he'd seen Jensen angry. Not just pissed. Furious. Usually he got quiet, grim and sad at once. Cougar gave in to gravity and the bed welcomed him back with a groan of the springs.

"You're angry," he said cautiously, unable to sort out more than the obvious.

"Yes. I'm angry. Congratulations on your nuanced grasp of emotions. Nice to know you've got a passing acquaintance with them. Sometimes it's hard to tell." Jensen grabbed Cougar by the wrist and dropped two aspirin into his palm, then offered what was left of the coffee. "Take those."

Cougar tossed them back and willed them to work fast. "Why?"

"Because you didn't ask me to help you." Jensen sat down on the floor and pulled Cougar's feet into his lap. He had a basin of water and a cloth that he used to wash Cougar's feet. "Contrary to popular belief, it won't make you less of a man to ask me for help. Here, I thought you trusted me not to tell." For all that he was angry, his hands were gentle. "Also, it's really fucking stupid to try and do everything on your own."

"Bad habit." That was all it was. He'd forgotten to ask. "Here." Cougar put the coffee aside and held out his hands, palms up. Jensen took them in his, delicately opening them to examine the damage.

"It's not fair if you do this to take care of us and then don't let me help you." Jensen looked at Cougar over the top of his glasses. "I thought it was you and me doing this."

"It is." Cougar put his elbows on his knees to ease his back and leaning forward brought him close enough to rest his forehead against Jensen's. "So get to it. Gonna lose my job if I miss the pick up."

"You wouldn't be running late if you'd asked first thing," Jensen said sententiously. His thumbs traced slow circles on Cougar's aching palms, soothing enough that Cougar thought he could fall asleep right here, like this, just from the touch.

"Lesson learned."

"Nuhuh. Not so fast, man. I'll let you know when I'm done enjoying the moral high ground."

"Damn it." Cougar wasn't looking forward to that, but he'd brought it on himself. "How do I get out of this one?"

"I'll let you know." Jensen pulled away to start cleaning Cougar's hands. "You might have to let me pick up some beer and, I don't know, rub your back or something. They say it takes at least twenty-one days to change a habit, though, and this one seems pretty bad. Also, you're old." He shot Cougar an unapologetic grin. "I'm sure that means it'll take longer."

"I can change." Cougar laughed at Jensen's grin. "I just need help."


	4. Hard World (#23. A Funeral)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you have trouble with non-explicit gun violence and death, please check the note at the bottom of the page.

Four hours, three bus rides, two favours, and a hundred dollars after he'd left the house, Jensen had his hands on the diseq motor he needed to aim the satellite dish he was, theoretically, getting from a dealer who hung out at the strip club with the marginally pretty girls. The apartment was a half hour walk from the last bus stop and the sun, while no longer set to kill at this hour, poured down and made him sweat. All he could taste right now was exhaust. Jensen shifted the box on his hip and took an alley across the block to get to the nearest cluster of shops. The extra five minutes it would take to get a genuinely cold Coke would be worth it, he told his aching feet.

Cougar wasn't happy about him dealing with black market sellers because it inevitably meant gang business but they didn't have government backup anymore. Besides, where they were, what wasn't gang business? The nights were often broken by of the rattle of gunfire, sometimes there was even blood in the stairwell of their apartment building and the facing out front was pockmarked with bullet holes. Lying about where he was getting things to make Cougar feel better would be as blatant as saying he'd gone shopping in Diagon Alley. Jensen was just going to have to deal with the disappointed glance and clenched jaw that meant Cougar hated leaving him to do this stuff on his own. Cougar didn't have to like it anymore than Jensen liked Cougar working ten hour days on unregulated construction sites.

Jensen wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that this was starting to feel normal. Life in the States seemed strange and distant, as though he were looking at his memories through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. He bought the Coke, half a dozen fresh eggs, and two oranges from the elderly woman behind the scuffed glass counter, thanked her, and headed back out into the heat that had plastered his clothes to his skin.

On the way home, he recognized faces. The girl with a limp who worked in the city, the mob of kids who played soccer in the street in front of the apartment building after school, the grumpy old man next door who sat on a duct-taped lawn chair in the shade of his building and threw lit cigarettes at the skinny dust-coloured cats that darted in and out of the alley behind him. The apartment building--five floors of faded yellow and green--had its own pulse, ambient noise that rose and fell. A woman called to her children from a balcony overhead and Jensen held the door open with his elbow as they scampered in. Home. For all its flaws and dangers, it had become home.

Every once in a while it hit Jensen that he lived in a shabby little apartment with Cougar and made him breakfast every morning, dinner every night. He'd never lived with anyone before. Sometimes it felt as though if Clay never contacted them, they would just go on like this forever, living hand to mouth and side by side. He could stand to lose the poverty, but the rest wouldn't be bad.

At home, Jensen checked his email and listened to the left-hand-side neighbour's soap opera through the thin walls while he started making dinner. Nothing from Clay. Goddamn it. The remains of a chicken went into a pot with some onions and garlic, water for the rice went into another pot on the only other working element. He was weighing whether to shower or do the laundry, pleasantly lost in the blur of domestic demands, when he found himself on the floor.

The sound in his ears was the memory of a gun shot, just one. It hung there for a long moment, then someone started screaming. Jensen was out the door and down the hall when he realized that he hadn't grabbed his own gun--again. He didn't have time to berate himself because a woman flew out of an apartment ahead of him, wailing in Spanish. She grabbed him like a drowning victim and dragged him into the apartment after her.

All his years in the field and nothing had prepared him for what waited inside. The air was thick with a haze of cooking oil and steam, flavoured with the taste of a freshly fired gun. A boy stood there in the tiny hall that led to two bedrooms, eyes dark as the muzzle of the gun he held in shaking hands.

"I didn't mean it. I'm sorry," he was saying in Spanish. "We were only playing."

"Let me have it," Jensen said quietly. His Spanish was so bad that Cougar cringed whenever he tried to practice but it seemed good enough now. The boy surrendered the gun. There wasn't any blood him so Jensen kept moving, thrust to the right by the woman behind him.

 _We were only playing_. He couldn't hear any crying. He didn't want to look.

Blood made slow, thin tracks toward the wall, the same way spilled coffee ran across their apartment floor. Jensen made himself follow it back to a spider-sprawl of black hair spread out on the cracked linoleum. The woman's wailing was somewhere far off and beyond that voices raised in alarm. He slid the gun into the waistband of his jeans without thinking about it and crouched down to feel the dead air over the little girl's parted lips, the stillness of the pulse in her throat. There was a flutter, but it could have been his imagination. Her eyes were empty. He couldn't make himself focus on her face, just the pieces of it he needed to see.

Even before he'd processed the enormity of the scene, a voice in the back of his head was telling him he couldn't be here when the police came. _Tough shit_ , he told the voice.

"Do something, do something," the woman was sobbing.

"I'm sorry," he said uselessly. "There's nothing I can do for her." He did it anyway, for her mother.

Cougar didn't get home until the sun was sliding under the ragged skyline in the west. The apartment stank like burnt metal from the pot that had boiled dry, the hall was still clotted with police and neighbours, Jensen could hear them when the door opened. It was only when the hinges squealed that he realized he was sitting in the near-dark.

"Jensen?"

"Funeral's on Tuesday morning."

"What?" Cougar's voice was sharp as the light he flicked on in the kitchen.

"For Maria Rivera. Little girl down the hall." This was the problem with staying anywhere too long. It started to be home. People had names. Faces. Tragedies.

"Okay." Cougar set his lunchbox on the counter and popped open the fridge. "I'll take some time off." The couch creaked as he sat down next to Jensen and tapped his arm with a nearly-cold bottle of beer.

"I hate guns." Jensen took the beer. "No offence."

"None taken. I don't like them much either." Cougar cracked open his beer and slouched down next to Jensen. "You okay?"

"No." Jensen could see Cougar nod out of the corner of his eye.

"This what you're watching?" Cougar gestured at the blank TV screen.

"Yes." It was all Jensen could deal with right now.

Anyone else would be handling it better than this, Jensen thought. What the fuck am I doing in this life? He couldn't deal with shit. Couldn't remember his gun. Next to useless on a good day. Couldn't keep his shit together.

Cougar shifted and slid his arm around Jensen's shoulders, pulling him close until Jensen didn't have much choice but to put his head on Cougar's shoulder. Cougar smelled of sweat and sun and sawdust. He put his boots up on the coffee table and took a drink of his beer.

"Okay," he said, as though Jensen were watching soccer or the news. "I'll watch with you."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: non-explicit violence and death involving a child.


	5. Trigger Pull (#2. Making Out)

Cougar usually prided himself on being the kind of man who didn't worry. He wasn't much for words. He didn't bother too much with other people's lives. He didn't judge or pry. It was all good.

It was all bullshit. He lay in the twisted sheets of his bed, listening to the dark so intently that his body was pulled tight as a bow string. His chest burned with holding his breath in case he missed a sound. In his mind's eye, he traced the periphery of the apartment. Any noise beyond that--a shout, a siren, an engine--was irrelevant. The squeak of the floorboards, the pop and suck of the fridge opening, clink of one bottle striking another, those were sounds that mattered.

The balcony door grated on its runners, the curtain rings scraped across the rod. They were four floors up, a long way down to cracked concrete. Too far. Cougar sat up in bed, his heart banging against his ribs. He worried about Jensen.

He'd worried about Jensen for years. Not just because he was blithe and sweet-tempered with a head for computers and little sense of self-preservation. Cougar had picked off more men simply keeping Jensen out of harm's way than he'd shot because he'd been assigned to end their lives. But that alone wasn't it. Cougar heard the clink of a bottle cap hitting the edge of a tin can, then falling in with the rest.

Jensen wasn't like them, Cougar and Clay and Roque, even Pooch. Jensen wore bright pink 'Petunias' T-shirts, unironically and shamelessly, he was a fan of his niece's soccer team without reservation the way that other people were fans of Man U. He was the antithesis of the rest of them and Cougar knew, because he could read it in Jensen's body like he was reading it in a book, that Jensen thought less of himself for it.

None of them had dealt well with Bolivia. There was no way to deal well with twenty-five kids being erased in front of you--especially since it should have been them that died. But that had a kind of distance to it. They'd been on duty, on assignment. At least they'd had the illusion of separation. Maria Rivera had died at home. Her home. Their home.

Cougar swung his feet over the side of the bed and rummaged for a shirt in the clean laundry packed in his pillow case on the floor, tugging it on and pulling it down to meet the top of the shorts he wore to bed. There wasn't any sleeping. Not when his mind kept running over the lines of Jensen's body, re-reading what was written in them today at the funeral. At least he had the reassurance that Jensen hated guns.

"Hey, Cougar." Jensen's cheerful voice greeted him before he stepped onto the narrow balcony. "Can't sleep?"

Hearing Jensen's voice usually made Cougar feel lighter in the chest, like smiling. Tonight, it just made him tense. Clay needed to hurry up and give them something to do. They weren't suited to this real life anymore. It was too hard on him, too hard on Jensen.

"Guess I didn't work enough today."

"Beer?" Jensen flashed him a smile and offered the bottle. "Last one."

"Thanks." Cougar was well aware. He'd been counting. Living with Jensen like this, under each other's feet all the time, his detachment was worn away to nothing but raw skin that seeped emotions. No more watching through a scope, listening over comms. He drank half of what was left of the beer.

"I should never have shaved my beard," Jensen said out of the blue. He sprawled into the only chair on the balcony and it listed dangerously under his weight. "I'm disappointed, Cougar. Usually, your advice is right on but I think the beard should have stayed."

It took Cougar a minute of complete bafflement--during which he was terrified Jensen had actually lost his mind--to track Jensen's train of thought back over a week. "If you hadn't shaved, I'd have cut it off while you slept." He dried the wet palm of his free hand on his shorts and switched the beer to that side before he dropped it.

"Now, don't be hasty." Jensen picked up a beer bottle cap that had missed the tin and tried again. It tinked off the edge and then rolled off the table. "I don't have a lot to offer, as evidenced by my appalling lack of coordination. You shouldn't deny me the opportunity to provide a little luck if that's what I can do. I could be, you know--" He gestured vaguely, then snapped his fingers. "--the team mascot. That's it. Lucky Jensen." He disappeared under the table with alarming alacrity.

Cougar drained the beer and set the bottle down by the door before going after Jensen. "Stop it." He slapped his hand over the bottle cap before Jensen could reclaim it.

"We're the Losers, man." Jensen tried to wriggle his fingers under Cougar's palm. "And I am a prime Loser."

"Not discussing this with you under here." Cougar got Jensen by the collar of his T-shirt, a cinnamon-coloured Sparrows Floor Hockey team shirt, and tugged. "Out."

"I can't," Jensen said as he staggered to his feet. He looked young and naked without his glasses. "I can't be like you guys. You. Clay. I couldn't look at her. I want to cry. Not just now. Not just about her. After Bolivia... twenty-five fucking kids, man. And you guys. You guys. You just. I don't know how." He was barely making sense, his face inches from Cougar's, his body taut with sincerity and grief. " _I forgot my gun_. I ran into fire without my gun. Again. Cougar, you are stuck out here with a guy who can't remember to take his _gun_  to a _gun fight_. I can't do this. I'm useless. You don't need me."

"Not true." Cougar got his hands on Jensen's face to make sure Jensen was focused on him. "We need you because you're not like us. Guns are my job. Other things are your job."

"You need someone who can have your back." Jensen clenched a fist in the front of Cougar's shirt and shook him for emphasis. "Someone who's not me."

"I didn't ask to go with someone else. I don't want someone else." Cougar leaned up and pressed a kiss to Jensen's forehead because it was the only way he knew how to emphasize how serious he was, to put it right there against Jensen's racing mind. "I want you."

"You're going to get yourself killed that way." Jensen stood still, hand flat against Cougar's chest, eyes closed. "Nothing's funny, nothing's good, nothing's right anymore. I can't let you do that. I can do that right." He pressed his cheek into one of Cougar's hands.

"This is what we have. I don't want something else." This time, Cougar wasn't speaking from a place of resignation the way he had in the past, set on a course and bound to it by duty.

This time, he brushed his lips against Jensen's. Aim, breathe, act. Pull the trigger. Smooth and gentle. He kissed Jensen the way he'd shoot someone, with all his will and certainty behind the bullet. His hips hit the railing behind him as Jensen stepped into him and the night wind caught in his hair a moment before Jensen tangled his hands in it.

"You're crazy," Jensen whispered, clenching his hands in Cougar's hair to keep their lips apart long enough to speak.

"You just catch that now?" Cougar laughed at him, then kissed him hard even though pulling against the hands in his hair made his eyes sting with the pain of it. "Doesn't mean I'm wrong." He pushed Jensen back toward the apartment and Jensen gave in to him until they hit the couch and fell down into the knotted sheets and scattered pillows with a shriek of springs.

"This I can do right." Jensen pushed his hands up under Cougar's shirt, his palms sticking to Cougar's damp skin.

"You're drunk." Cougar caught one hand, then the other, and pinned them to the couch on either side of Jensen's head.

"Just. Five beers. And a bit," Jensen said, looking up at him wide-eyed.

"Eleven and a half."

"Oops."

"Yes. Oops." Cougar kissed Jensen again to feel him yield and open up. Jensen hadn't been lying about being able to do this part right. His mouth was hot and needy, he kissed Cougar as though Cougar were the cure for all his pain. "That's what I want," Cougar murmured against his lips.

"What?" Jensen pressed back into the creaking couch, trying to read Cougar's expression in the near-dark.

Cougar shook his hair back so Jensen could see his face. "To make it better for you."

"You do." Jensen nodded slowly. "Don't stop."

Cougar kissed him again instead of speaking. _I won't_.


	6. Soonest Mended (#13. First Aid)

Five in the morning and Jensen was putting Cougar's lunch together in his sleep, fingers slick with chicken fat and shaky with his hangover. His lips stung with dryness, his cheeks burned. He rested his head against the cupboard over the counter and reached for the good knife with one hand, holding a yellow onion to the faded green cutting board with the other.

The first cut made his eyes water as milky juice welled out of the onion's wounds and leaked across the cutting board. The weak light from the single bulb over the stove glinted off the wetness, picking out the swell and curve of every rivulet. Jensen blinked his eyes clear and flipped half the onion flat side down onto the board, cutting into it again. The trickles followed the slant of the board. There wasn't a single level spot in the building. Everything spilled ran down hill.

On the third cut, the knife skated askew and the point tore a furrow down Jensen's finger. His blood spattered the wall as he flicked the knife point out of his flesh with a stifled grunt of pain, a river of red ran over the yellow and green in front of him and rolled toward lower ground. He stared dumbly at the cut, wondering whether or not he'd seen bone and afraid to look closer to find out.

"I don't have time for this," he muttered. Before he knew it, the cutting board hit the wall, then the knife. "I don't have time for this," he shouted, as though volume would convince the universe that he was serious.

"Don't have time for--" Cougar didn't finish the sentence. One of his hands closed on Jensen's wrist like a steel trap and dragged his hand under a rush of cold water at the sink. "Let me see," he said, resisting Jensen's attempt to pull away.

"For this shit," Jensen finished. "Don't have time for this shit." He didn't want to stand still, he was going crazy standing still, even long enough to let Cougar wrap his hand with a clean dish towel. "I want to shoot something." The urge to do something terrible and definitive was overwhelming. "Me. I do. This is not good. Very much not good."

"If it's not yourself, we can talk." Cougar's hand was painfully tight on Jensen's.

"Myself. Why would I... I wouldn't." He focused on Cougar's face, the dark circles under his long lashes, the light on his deep copper skin, the tendrils of shadow cast by his hair. "Is that what you're worried about? Is that what last night was about?"

"Some. And no." Cougar bumped Jensen with hip to get him to move, then reached past him to pull the field medicine kit out of the cupboard. "Last night..." This close, Jensen could see his cheeks darken. "Clear line of sight. Wait too long, miss the shot."

"Oh. I." Jensen was temporarily at a loss for words. His hand didn't even hurt anymore, not even when Cougar unwrapped it to take a look under the weak light over the stove. "You never miss, do you?"

"Sometimes." Cougar was motionless for a fraction of a second, lips parted on a breath that didn't come, eyes looking at something or someone Jensen knew wasn't there. He let the moment pass and then Cougar inhaled sharply with a sound like paper tearing. "Needs stitches," he said, breaking back into the present with a shake of his head.

"You're good at those." Jensen nudged Cougar's cheek with his nose, trying to get a smile out of him. "It'll match the ones you did on my shoulder. Maybe you should start signing them, you know, since I'm kind of turning into an Alvarez masterpiece." That got Jensen a smile and a laugh that made him relax.

"You want me to put my name on you?" Cougar pointed Jensen over to the workbench--the only place with decent light--and Jensen went to sit down. "Where should I put it?" Cougar started washing his hands at the kitchen sink.

"I dunno." Jensen took a peek at his finger but couldn't see much for the steady welling of blood that ran off to soak the dish towel. Shit. That was going to leave a mark. Not looking at it would make it hurt less. That was probably scientific. "You could put it on my ass."

"I don't need to read my own name all the time." Cougar dried his hands on paper towelling, then brought the roll over with him. "Put the light on."

"Please." Jensen rolled his eyes. "Like you look at my ass."

"I'm a bored man with a rifle scope," Cougar said. He pulled Jensen's hand under the white beam of Jensen's work lamp. Putting together computer parts required good lighting. "And it's a nice ass. You spend more time naked than you think. Especially in hot weather."

Jensen was sure Cougar was joking right up until Cougar looked him in the eyes with this little smile that made Jensen's cheeks burn with self-consciousness. Cougar usually did keep an eye on things while the rest of them washed up in the mornings, it was just...

"I always assumed you were looking out for bad guys." Jensen really hated it when his voice got all squeaky like that.

"I'm good at my job." Cougar sloshed sweet-smelling yellow antiseptic over Jensen's hand. Mercifully, it didn't sting. Then, he tore open the package of a prepared needle and suture thread. "Don't even need both hands all the time," he added, deadpan.

When that finally seeped in, Jensen was so stunned he didn't feel the needle going in for the first stitch. He would have blushed again but there wasn't any blood to spare for it. God, that was hot. That was so hot it could not possibly be true. Not a chance.

"You. You don't. Didn't. Haven't. Wouldn't," Jensen sputtered. Cougar deftly knotted the thread, then gave Jensen a look that nearly set his hair on fire. "Oh. You have. I see. That's. Am I the last to know? Because no one tells me anything. And. If people who aren't me know, I don't know how I feel about that. I know that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' got repealed but--"

It was impossible to keep talking when Cougar was kissing him so Jensen gave up on it, got a handful of Cougar's hair in his good hand, and kissed him back hard. Too soon, Cougar pulled away with a little frown that Jensen recognized as his 'don't bug me, Jensen' expression.

"I need to finish. No talking." Jensen let him work, the pain of each stitch dulled by how ridiculously turned on he was right now. "They don't know," Cougar said as he knotted and cut the seventh stitch. He pulled out gauze and tape to wrap Jensen's finger. "None of their business."

"Good point. It's not. They don't tell us everything." Jensen could accept that. "It's not like we have to do reports anymore either. Can you imagine Clay trying to explain that? O-five-hundred hours, Jensen received a self-inflicted wound treated by Alvarez with first aid and making out."

Of course, that meant that all of this was temporary. Once it wasn't just them anymore, it'd have to be over. He could deal with that, it was worth it. Maybe he'd get lucky and they'd get stuck with each other like this again and they could pick it up then.

"They'll figure it out." Cougar ripped off a piece of tape with his teeth and stuck the gauze in place. "Don't get that wet."

"I won't," Jensen said automatically. _They'll figure it out_. He extrapolated from that and every route he took ended in the same place--this not being over when the team was back together again. And Cougar just. As though it were a given. Like that. Like nothing. Like normal.

"All fixed." Cougar ruffled Jensen's hair as he got up.  "Good as new."

"Better than." Jensen looked down at the bandages on his finger, then started cleaning up the debris from the packaging. "I can already tell this is going to be my favourite scar. Like I wasn't really me without it. I think it completes me, you know. Still. I might want to get one on the other hand. I'm a pretty symmetrical guy." He ducked but Cougar still managed to hit him in the head with the balled-up bloody towel.


	7. Internal Inconsistencies (#14. Telling Lies)

"Ey, man." Oscar smacked Cougar on the shoulder as he swung up into the truck. "Almost left without you."

"Slept in." The sun was already washing the last of the pink and orange out of the sky. Cougar slouched down next to him and stretched his legs out as best he could between Manny and Pedro sitting across from him. "Long day yesterday." He sorted out his lunchbox and hard hat, then took the cup of coffee Oscar was offering him. Didn't taste a thing like Jensen's coffee, good in a different way.

"That funeral, that was the little girl, right?" Manny looked up from the section of newspaper in front of him. The truck took off with a cough and rattle, jostling them the way it did every morning. Cougar held the coffee away from him until the rocking evened out, then took another drink.

"Yeah. A neighbour. Wasn't there when it happened but, you know." Cougar shrugged and handed the cup back to Oscar. "They're just two doors down, the family."

"It was good for you to go." Oscar nudged him with an elbow. "People don't do the right thing enough."

"We all do what we can, right?" Cougar tried to get comfortable. The knots in his back pressed painfully against the side of the truck bed. There was no way he could explain that he'd gone for Jensen, that he was worried about Jensen still, even if he was starting to think of the men he worked with as friends.

"You got kids?" Oscar closed up his thermos and tucked it between them. "Guy like you should be married by now."

"Not so lucky." Cougar shook his head. "Move around a lot, job here, job there." Most of the other guys in the truck nodded in agreement.

"Work gets scarce, you move on," Pedro said, nodding sagely. He was older than the rest of them, silver stubble dusting his hollowed cheeks and sharp jaw. "Women, they need a home. Not like us."

"Some day, who knows. God willing," Cougar said, because it was what he was supposed to say. "I'll find someone who can put up with me."

The team lived in a surreal bubble, cut off from the rest of the world. They didn't make friends. They didn't fall in love. Pooch had been married to Jolene before he'd signed on and Roque had almost come to blows with Clay over letting a married guy in. They didn't buy houses. Or settle down. But things changed.

Clay and Aisha were as close to settled down as the job allowed, caught up in their web of costing each other everything that mattered. He'd killed her father, she'd cost him Roque. Cougar didn't want that. He'd never thought he'd have Pooch's picket fence and minivan either. He just wanted--he wasn't sure anymore. When the truck lurched to a halt at the site gates, leaving Cougar a little queasy as always, he unloaded with the guys and headed for the foreman's office to check in.

What Cougar was sure of was that he couldn't do this much longer. Not because all he could taste at the end of the day was hot welds and concrete, not because his hair turned grey with dust and his back ached, not because they were all but subletting from the roaches in their apartment. He wasn't sure how much longer he could do this because he was happy and he couldn't lie to himself about it any more. In spite of all the shit and waiting and worry, he was more human, more real, and more unbearably happy every day.

***

The sun was a smear of red at the end of the street when Cougar got home. The kids were all inside, replaced by teenagers draped nonchalantly over front steps and the occasional car or motorbike. The wind was lukewarm with a hint of something that might have been the promise of rain. Inside, the stairwell had the weird olive glow it usually did at this time of day, ambient light the same colour as the smell of sweat and smoke and urine that always lingered. Cougar was fumbling for his keys to let himself into the apartment when the door popped open.

"Mail came." Jensen's expression was inscrutable. Cougar felt about the same, unknowable even inside his own head. Jensen stepped back to let him in, then locked the door behind him. "Call's coming midnight UTC-minus-five. I'll stay up."

"About time." Cougar put his lunchbox down on the counter, tossed his hard hat beside it. No sense trying to make anything of it. "Thought they forgot us."

"You, maybe." Jensen bumped him out of the way with his hip. "You're always off somewhere being distant and hard to read. Me, I am hard to miss." This was true, since Jensen was wearing the eye-bleeding combination of red basketball shorts and a Lakers tanktop. He started running water into the sink to do the dishes from Cougar's lunch and the dinner preparations. Whatever he'd made smelled good.

"I'll do it later." Cougar's voice came out sharper than he wanted as he elbowed Jensen aside and flicked off the taps. "Your hand. I'm not fixing it twice."

"You just worked all day." Jensen turned the taps back on, then slapped something down on the counter. "Rubber gloves. See? Resourceful is my middle name."

"Clay has good timing," Cougar muttered, pulling off his shirt as he headed for the shower. "This is turning into a sitcom. We need to get back to work."

The bathroom door banged shut on anything Jensen had to say. Cougar flicked a roach off the shower wall before turning the water on. It floundered in the rush of cloudy water from the tap, fighting the current before it was sucked away. He watched it go down and felt as though part of him went with it.


	8. What Heals (#6. Cooking)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains explicit sex. (In case you wanted to skip it.) (Who am I kidding, right?)

Jensen laid dinner out while Cougar was still in the shower. Enchiladas, which he'd gotten some very good advice on from someone's abuela at the funeral. He was getting better at cooking all the time. He wasn't used to being the one who was best at anything on the team and, granted, it wasn't killing people or blowing shit up, but people had to eat. He pulled on the rubber gloves--he'd been pretty pleased with himself for having thought of them, damn it, it was out of character for him--and did the dishes.

Dinner was quiet. Cougar did say it was good but he didn't eat much and he didn't say anything more. Jensen wasn't sure what was wrong but he knew that talking wouldn't fix it. It was Cougar. The last thing that was going to sort something out for Cougar was words. Jensen just had hold on and wait, have a little faith.

As the dark came on, Cougar took over the workbench, laying out all their guns and going over each one with the same ritual Jensen had watched for years. The smell of gun oil and the noise of bullets snapping into clips were familiar and yet made Jensen's gut knot. He paced uselessly from one side of the tiny apartment to the other, picking things up and wondering if he should pack them, then setting them back down.

Folding laundry was a good bet. They always needed clean clothes and they could pack if everything were folded. He'd opened up the bed in the couch to lay it all out because he was behind on it after the last few days. Keeping busy would keep him from thinking too much--not that anyone would ever accuse him of over-thinking things, as Clay would point out.

Cougar put each gun back into its place except one. He slid it into its holster, tucked the clips into their belt-clip cases, then put them down on Jensen's pillow. "Don't forget it next time."

"I won't." The Defender wasn't as pretty as the big shiny gun he'd had before Bolivia but they hadn't been running under the radar then. He'd fired it a few times and managed not to take his own foot off or put an eye out and there was no excuse for leaving it behind. It was compact enough he should have had it on him all this time.

"Wake me if Clay wants me." Cougar shouldered his rifle bag and disappeared into the bedroom.

"I will." Jensen tucked the gun and clips under his pillow. Just like that, things were back to the way they had been--Cougar might as well have been a mile away on the other end of a scope. There was no chasing him. Jensen put the folded laundry back into the duffel bags he'd used to carry it back from the laundromat, then sat down on the bed to work on his satellite code in case Clay had a target for them.

Three minutes to midnight and Jensen's back was cramped, his eyes blurry, his ears numb from leaving his Nine Inch Nails playlist on loop. One hour, three minutes until Clay's call. His program for the tracking motor was looking good, though, so were his data sorting algorithms. He needed more processing power than eight desktop computers running at once if he was going to do anything fancier.

"It's shit but it's what there is," he muttered, pulling his glasses off to rub his eyes. When he opened them again, he couldn't see the screen, then someone tweaked his headphones off and threw them aside. His gun was in reach but he didn't go for it. He knew the smell of the shampoo he and Cougar shared. Cougar took his glasses away next and Jensen just let him have them. They hit the workbench with a quiet clatter a second later. He bit back any questions and held out his hand.

Cougar didn't take it but Jensen ended up on his back with the sofa bed protesting under their weight. Cougar's still-damp hair fell all around them like Spanish moss so that Jensen couldn't read his face even though there was just enough ambient screen-light in the room. He could read Cougar's kisses, though, the heat of Cougar's mouth and the push of Cougar's tongue past his teeth. Cougar kissed him like they were already fucking, shoved Jensen's shirt up with a sharp gesture that was as loud and demanding as a drill sergeant's shout.

"Okay," Jensen murmured, when Cougar let him breathe. He pulled the shirt off and threw it away while Cougar undid the tie of his shorts and tugged the waistband down. Being naked in front of the guys was nothing. This wasn't just being naked. Jensen lifted his hips so Cougar could strip his shorts off. "You, too."

There was plenty of light for him to make everything out when Cougar got up to peel off the boxers he slept in. Goddamn, the man was gorgeous. Jensen had been looking at him for years and it never got old. Cougar just looked better every time, better now than ever. All the construction work had put muscle on his lean body, left him sculpted like an artist had carved him out of cedar.

Watching Cougar pull his hair back and tug an elastic from his wrist to hold it off his face did more than just turn Jensen on, it made his chest hurt with things he didn't have words for. He got to his knees at the end of the bed so he could touch, fighting uncertainty. Cougar was so much more than just too good for him but then he leaned into Jensen's hands and kissed him hard for a long time before pushing him back onto the bed again.

Jensen didn't get a chance to ask what Cougar wanted before Cougar crawled up over him to kiss him again, straddling his hips. Words were useless with Cougar, he reminded himself. Especially now. Especially like this.

Cougar was as smooth and sleek under Jensen's hands as he was under Jensen's gaze. The world distilled down to the way Cougar kissed him so hard and so deep that Jensen was only breathing at his mercy, the way that Cougar's hips fit into Jensen's hands, and then Cougar touched him and he couldn't breathe at all. Cougar's hand was slick with something that eased the path of Jensen's cock against his callused palm.

Jensen was certain he tried to say something about how much he wanted this but the words sounded foreign in his own ears. To his surprise, Cougar said something in return, something in Spanish, and that much he could understand. _You're mine_.

That wasn't going to change. Jensen wound the fingers of his good hand in the fall of Cougar's ponytail and pulled him down for a kiss. "They'll figure it out," he said clearly this time, remembering when Cougar had said it.

All he got in return was a nod and then he was sinking into the heat of Cougar's body and, God help him, he hadn't expected that. He pulled away from Cougar's mouth to inhale. The humid night air felt cold going down, he was so hot inside and out. Cougar's hand on his chest pinned him to the bed and his hands found Cougar's hips again. They fit perfectly, moved like they knew what they were doing, like they were made for it.

The faded blue-white glow of the sleeping screens picked out Cougar's features, turned his eyes into dark lakes touched with the glimmer of a night sky. He looked serene, focused, lips parted the way they were when he was taking aim. He took one of Jensen's hands in his, wrapped it around his cock. When Jensen touched him, he leaned back, hands on Jensen's knees behind him. He was so bare and vulnerable like that it made Jensen's heart ache even as it made him want to sign the flawless line of Cougar's throat with the scrawl of his bites and kisses.

He gave both hands over to stroking Cougar's cock and balls as Cougar rode him. Cougar was silent again except for his sharp breaths but the shivers running through him and the clench of his belly spoke volumes. When Cougar's breath caught in his throat and his rhythm faltered, Jensen bit back a moan. Come splattered his chest and he held on as long as he could before he grabbed Cougar's hips again to pull him down harder and faster. Cougar kissed him and silenced him as he came, feet sliding in the sheets and all coordination lost.

Cougar bent over Jensen, hiding his face in the sweat-slick curve of Jensen's throat. Jensen stroked his back, tracing the lines and knots of muscle. There was something like a breeze from the open balcony door and the air still felt cool against Jensen's skin. He fumbled for the corner of a sheet, then dragged it up over Cougar's back, swaddling them together. If he craned a little, he could see the floating hours and minutes chasing each other around one of his idle screens. Twelve-thirty-three.

"How long?" Cougar didn't move.

"Twenty-seven minutes." Jensen stroked his sleek hair. Twenty-seven minutes more until they had to leave this behind and go back to what they were, what they had been. He pressed a kiss to Cougar's shoulder. "That's practically forever in Cougar time."

Cougar snorted softly against Jensen's neck. "Jokes about my performance already?"

"No!" Jensen laughed at him, then slapped him on the hip through the sheet. "I just meant... you don't need long to change everything. You keep doing it."

"Not changing." Cougar pushed himself up with his hands on Jensen's shoulders. Just moving like that made Jensen shudder, scattered his concentration. "Nothing changed. It's just here now."

Jensen turned that over in his head, then nodded. He reached up to stroke Cougar's cheek because he could, because touching him felt like completing a circuit. That made him feel better. They didn't have to go back to anything. They were just going to be themselves a little differently.

"Okay. I'll buy it." Twelve-thirty-five. "Twenty-five minutes. What are we going to do with all that time?"

Cougar shifted to sprawl bonelessly against Jensen's side. "You could get me some dinner." He gave Jensen the most innocent look possible for a man who also looked damn pleased with himself. "What? Fucking makes me hungry."

"You should have eaten what I served you when it was on the table, then." Jensen rolled up over him, laughing. "Jerk. Here I thought you were getting tired of my cooking."

"Never." Cougar leaned up and kissed him. "You can cook for me as long as you like."

"You sure?" Jensen untangled himself from the sheets. "That could be a long time. You might get tired of me."

"Hasn't happened yet." Cougar's hand came down on his ass with a gunshot crack that was louder than it was hard.

"Hey! I think I like it better when you're in a bad mood," Jensen muttered, rubbing his ass.

"Get in the kitchen and get me my dinner." Cougar flopped back into the pillows, grinning.

 


	9. A Future Like Now (29. Plans for the Future)

The room was alight with the glow of multiple screens from the big television to Jensen’s phone. Jensen was still stark naked, damp from a quick shower. The water and light on his pale skin made him luminous, his spiky hair was full of glittering droplets, the lenses of his glasses were silver discs at this angle. He looked alien and beautiful at once.

Cougar wasn’t reticent for lack of things to say. Sometimes words broke things--silence and trust and moments like this--so they had to be deployed carefully, as with bullets. Sometimes he had so many things to say they got caught in his throat and filled up his chest until he couldn’t speak, so he stayed quiet. Right now, he was too busy watching Jensen to bother sorting through all his words to put any out there. Jensen turned a little and caught him watching, flashed him a grin that said Cougar didn’t need to say anything anyway.

“Almost time.” Jensen plugged the satellite phone into the computer on the bed, then reached over and flipped on the maskers to keep their voices from seeping out beyond their little bubble. “Ready?” He sprawled on the bed and laid his head on Cougar’s thigh. Cougar shook his head and, even though Jensen couldn’t see him, Jensen said, “Me neither.”

Right at midnight, Clay’s time, the phone rang and Jensen hit a key on the computer to answer it.

“Yo, boss.”

“This line secure?” Clay sounded rough even when Cougar subtracted the static from the message.

“More than. Everyone okay?” Jensen rolled over onto his belly and reached for a notepad and paper.

“We’re good. Well, we are now. I’ll be sending Pooch your way. Aisha and I have to follow up on something else before we meet up with you.”

“What have you got for us?” Jensen had his feet in the air, legs crossed at the ankles, lying there like he was a little kid in colouring front of the television. Cougar resisted the urge, barely, to grab a handful of that ass. Maybe having his name tattooed across it wasn’t a bad idea.

“A name. A professor. I need you to get into her work and see what she’s doing for Max. Dr. Eliana Alicea.” Clay spelled it out, then rattled off her phone number, address, birth date, social insurance number. “Professor of Engineering working on the Arecibo Observatory.”

“Astrophysics? What the hell is Max--never mind. I can do that. Anything else?”

“Contact me when you have something on Alicea. Pooch will be in San Juan in thirty-six hours to help you out. Use the box in the train station for making contact.”

“Will do.”

“Everything okay there?”

Jensen paused and glanced over his shoulder at Cougar. “It’s all good. I just need that dish. Once Pooch is here, I’ll pick it up. We’ll be out of here by then.”

“Good enough. Clay out.”

Jensen shut down the phone, then passed the pad to Cougar. The name was an easy one to remember. Cougar memorized the address; the rest would be stored in Jensen’s head. Cougar ripped the top handful of pages off the pad and shredded them.

“Well. Guess you won’t miss getting up at five in the morning.” Jensen rolled off the bed and turned off the maskers. The whine that made Cougar’s ears itch faded away to nothing. “Toiling away all day while I sit around on my ass, coming home to this dump. Nights almost as hot as the days. Nothing ever really dry or cold or clean.”

Cougar got up to flush the bits of paper down the toilet. The tiny green bathroom smelled of mildew, bleach, and the shampoo they used. The mirror over the sink made him look diseased. A roach scurried out from under the hot water tap and Cougar let it scamper down the overflow drain unmolested.

“It wasn’t bad.”

Everything was still out in the main room after he spoke, the squeak of the floorboards under Jensen’s feet stopped dead. In the mirror, Cougar could just see the line of his arm and shoulder and the curve of his hip. Even in that tiny scrap of shorthand he could read Jensen as clearly as if he could see his face. Sadness. A little bit of guilt. Uncertainty.

“You didn’t mind?”

Hard work, the company of good people, the air full of the language he’d first known as a child. Doing something that built life up instead of broke it down. Coffee with cinnamon, spiced buñuelos hot from the fry cart, empanadas or tortillas in his lunch box. Talking shit about football in the back of the truck all the way home while a game blared over the crackling radio in the cab, beer and dinner ready for him on the table at the end of the day. A roof over his head paid for with money he’d earned with sweat and muscle. A roof over _their_ heads. Cougar couldn’t remember when he’d felt more like a man.

“No.”

“Me either.” Jensen was silent for a long moment. Cougar looked back, saw his shoulders rise and fall with a slow breath. “I’d do it again.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe some other time.” Jensen looked over his shoulder to meet Cougar’s eyes.

“Maybe.” Cougar tugged the elastic out of his hair as he came out of the bathroom, shaking it out so it would dry through. He snapped the elastic back around his wrist and the sting went through him like lightning. The only time was now and he was letting it slide. In thirty-six hours he’d be behind the rifle scope, figuratively or literally--each was undesirable in its own way. “Definitely.”

Jensen tilted his head and gave Cougar a baffled look, processing the evidence somewhere behind his blue eyes. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

Cougar knew he could give any answer and Jensen would nod, file it away, and move on. After. Later. Soon. Next year. When this is over.

“Tomorrow. Day after. Day after that.” Cougar shrugged, trying to loosen the tightness in his chest. “Whenever’s good for you.”

“Tomorrow’s good. Day after. Day after that.” Jensen reached out and laid a hand on Cougar’s hip. It fit perfectly, warm and smooth and strong. His shrug mirrored Cougar’s. “I’ll let you know if it changes.”


	10. What Is Retained (#15. Photographs)

Thirty-six hours wasn’t long enough. After Clay’s call, they only had a few hours before Cougar went to his last day of work. Then they’d be in motion, on mission again.

“You need to sleep. I’ll start packing.” Jensen had intended to be mature about this but Cougar’s hand closed around his wrist. Not tightly. Loose but unbreakable, like a steel bracelet. “Or not. I can not-pack. I won’t even think about packing.” Not thinking about packing left him time to think about too many other things. “As long as you sleep. Because the last thing we need is for you to hurt yourself on the job tomorrow and--“

“I’ll sleep.” Cougar let go of him then and crawled into the sofa bed. The side Jensen didn’t sleep on. Jensen just stared while he parsed the idea that Cougar knew what side of the bed he slept on when there was enough room, then he forced his legs to work, to take him over to the bed. His side of the bed.

He didn’t get chances to see Cougar rest. Ever. Cougar slept lightly, like a wild animal. If someone so much as breathed near him, his body tightened and he cracked open one dark eye to glare at the the threat. That image of him Jensen knew well, the tension in his arm as he found one of the various weapons he kept within reach. In this life he was a jumble of loose limbs in Jensen’s bed, his dark hair scribbled across both pillows. Jensen settled in carefully, unsure of where to put his hands.

For the first seconds Jensen was uncertain but then the ancient sofa bed sighed, yielding to their combined weight, and tipped Cougar down toward him. Jensen wrapped an arm around Cougar’s waist, buried his nose in the tangle of hair at the nape of Cougar’s neck and felt Cougar sigh. Jensen closed his eyes and was asleep so fast that all he remembered was a faint regret at not being able to stay awake long enough to soak the sensations in a little longer.

The alarm went off too soon. Jensen made breakfast and tried to pretend the tension on Cougar’s face wasn’t there at all. He knew it wasn’t about him. When he brought Cougar’s coffee over, Cougar leaned into him for a moment, just the press of his shoulder against Jensen’s thigh, but it was so much more expressive than words. There wasn’t anything to say, nothing to do but what needed doing, so Jensen just let his hand rest on Cougar’s hair. He could speak Cougar’s language well enough after all these years. Cougar inhaled and straightened, gave Jensen a flash of a smile.

“I’ll have the van by tonight when you get home.” Jensen turned back to the kitchen. He was going to miss this place. He wanted something to keep, a photograph, anything to prompt his memories.

Cougar shook his head. “Wait for me. I’ll help you. I just might have to go out with the guys before I get back.”

“I can manage.”

“I know.” Cougar shrugged one shoulder. Jensen picked up the line of thought a fraction too late, but better than not at all. Some things were supposed to be done together.

“I’ll wait for you.”

Cougar checked his watch. “Can’t be late.”

“Your shirt’s on the chair.” Jensen got back to packing Cougar’s lunch for the last time. When Cougar took it from him, he kissed Jensen on the mouth, pushing him back against the counter. He smelled clean, like soap and mint, the fabric of his faded blue work shirt was soft under Jensen’s hands. “Have a good day.”

“Always do.” And with that, he was out the door.

As it closed, Jensen heard him greet someone out in the hall. It was barely past zero-dark-thirty but here it was time for people to be getting to work. The city was a long way away. If they’d stayed, Jensen would have picked up work there and left at the same time, parted ways with Cougar where the bus and the construction job trucks crossed paths in the parking lot behind the shoe factory.

But that was a life that wasn’t going to happen. Jensen finished his coffee and shook off the memory of Cougar’s touch. Time to get back to what mattered--or, maybe, time to make it matter again.

He flipped on the main computer and checked his alerts. An AP article with photographs and video scrolled onto the television screen. There was a face Jensen hadn’t expected to see again so soon. His blood pressure soared until he could feel his heart pounding behind his eyes.

Max. Son of a bitch, what was he playing at? Politics, apparently. There he was with the Secretary of Defence. Jensen couldn’t believe the bastard’s gall. Crawling out of the woodwork like a roach. Now that his face wasn’t secret anymore, it was safer for him to hide right out in the open. Son of a bitch.

The paper Jensen held crumpled in his grasp. He looked down to see the program from Maria Rivera’s funeral. Regret filled him immediately and he smoothed it out, then folded the edges back carefully so that her photograph was on top. Her death still left ripples around the neighbourhood. Her mother’s boyfriend had left with the police and his stash of guns and drugs.

Under the couch, up inside, was a small lock box. Jensen tucked the program in there with a jumble of postcards and pictures, trading it for a wad of emergency cash before he stashed the box in his duffel bag. They could spare it.

In the shoe box where he’d kept all their bills and receipts, Jensen found a plain white envelope. He wrapped the cash in a sheet of paper, an elastic band around the whole thing, then put it on the table with another piece of paper and a pen. Cougar could do the rest.

Now, he had to dismantle his systems and get them ready to go, arrange for a vehicle, and drop off the meet-up coordinates at the train station for Pooch. Long day ahead.

Cougar rolled in long after dark, smelling of cigars and beer and looking decidedly worse-for-wear. He threw his hard hat on top of the fridge and dropped his lunch box into the empty sink.

“Done’s done.”

Jensen wanted to say something, like how he was sorry Cougar was having to leave his friends, but you didn’t interrupt a man’s coping to blather on about the obvious. Of course he was fucking sorry. They both were.

“Dinner’s ready. Then we go out to pick up the van.” He pointed at the envelope on the table. “Can you just write ‘Sorry for your loss’ or something on that paper and put it in the envelope? I’ll drop it off later. For Mrs. Rivera.”

“Sure.” Cougar picked up the envelope, looked inside, then put it down and scrawled something in Spanish across the page. “This is why.” He put the paper in and sealed the envelope. “This.”

“Why what?” Jensen peered at Cougar, trying to parse his expression.

“Everything.” Cougar tossed him the envelope. “What’s for dinner?”


	11. The Big Blind (#8. Making Bets)

Cougar grabbed his duffle bag and, right on top, there was his hat. Where the hell it had been all this time was beyond him but Jensen never lost anything. He dragged it out and put it on. Knife. Knife. Gun. Gun. He pulled an old khaki vest on to hide the holsters. Felt like putting on his old life. Gloves. Ear bud.

“We have an hour.” Jensen was by the door, hands in his pockets, his expression cool. He’d abandoned his comic book colour choices for jeans and a patched army jacket with the name tag torn off it. It used to say J. Jensen. Cougar remembered him picking the stitches out with one of Roque’s massive blades, his face serious as though he was performing an amputation. “We’ll have to walk.”

“You have the cash?”

“And left enough for Pooch in the box.” Jensen pulled off his glasses and ran a hand over his face. “Let’s do this.”

Cougar waited at the end of the hall while Jensen tucked the envelope under the Rivera’s door. When he was done, he looked grim and sick in the watery yellow light from a single bulb at the end of the hall. Still not okay. Cougar kept wanting to ask but the answer was always right there. He just wanted to hear something different.

The night air was thick and hot, a siren howled in the distance. Jensen walked on ahead while Cougar hung back, surveying the scene. They cut through an alley so narrow that the sky above was nothing more than a ribbon of orange-grey against the black shadows of the buildings on either side. Something about the night made the hairs prickle on the back of Cougar’s neck.

“What’s wrong?” Jensen paused where the alley met the street on the next block.

“Nothing.” Cougar shook it off. It was just being down on the ground. No line of sight. The trickle of sweat down his spine that felt like nerves. Everything was the same but everything had changed. Now he felt what Jensen meant about things being different.

They kept to the shadows except where Jensen led him through the halls of an apartment that was worse off than theirs. The air stank like sweat and trash, a constant cacophony of crying children and raised voices gnawed at Cougar’s ears.

“I’m homesick already,” Jensen muttered. The back door, half off its hinges, let them out near a row of overflowing dumpsters. A few fat rain drops hit Cougar’s hat as they stepped out into the parking lot. The clouds had clotted and swelled, reflecting more ambient dirty peach light even as they started to leak rain. “Well. This feels right. Sweltering and raining at once. Bets on it opening up before we get there?” He pointed to a parking garage two blocks down.

“With our luck?” Cougar snorted. “Hope you didn’t pack all our clothes.”

“Pessimist. Where’s the cheery little sniper we know and love?”

“I shot him.” Cougar shoved Jensen’s shoulder to get him going again.

They made it to half a block away before thunder rolled and the sky opened up. Jensen said, “Fuck it,” and picked up the pace with Cougar hot on his heels. They were completely drenched when they ducked into the gaping doorway of the old parking garage. The acrid smell of smoke from mingled drugs was the first thing to hit Cougar’s senses, then oil and mould and alcohol-laced vomit.

“You were coming here alone?” he cuffed Jensen upside the head as they made their way up through the levels of the garage.

“Hey. It would have been daylight if I’d gone alone. Everything looks worse in the dark.” Once they got to the third floor, Jensen gestured up to the left. “Over here. Benito?”

“Yo man.” The man’s voice was young but thick with years of smoking. “You got my cash?”

“Let’s see what you’ve got.” Cougar stepped past Jensen and snapped his fingers at the faint silhouette of a man leaning on the van ahead of them. Beyond him, the rain was a thick grey curtain falling past the half-walls of the garage. “You bring anyone with you?”

“Nah. I live close. I know the place.” The lanky man leaned into the van and flicked the headlights on, splashing Cougar with yellow light and leaving him wincing. “You already had a test drive, man. You know she--" There was crack and the wet sound of a melon splitting.

“Jensen!” Cougar ducked into the shadows under the tires, hitting the limp body on the way. He grabbed it and put it between him and the rest of the world. Gun shots rang out, half of them sounded like Jensen’s Colt. Tires screamed somewhere in the dark back the way they’d come. A spray of bullets pounded up the concrete and one ripped into his calf, he felt it hit the knife he had sheathed in his boot.

“Get in the van.” Jensen’s voice was in his ear even as the Colt sounded further away from where he’d seen Jensen last. The bullets stopped coming Cougar’s way. “They’re with me.”

Cougar threw himself into the van and found the keys in the ignition. He reversed, swinging the headlight beams around in time to catch a moving figure in his headlights. Son of a bitch had an HK21. The man’s head rocked back and he dropped. Had. Jensen was a damn good shot when he remembered his gun. Cougar flicked his headlights off as Jensen vaulted the low wall separating the parking rows and ran for it.

Driving backward through a pitch black parking lot was Pooch’s job but Cougar managed for about thirty seconds until he hit a pillar and the screech of metal gave away his position. A few lucky shots ripped into the side of the van, then a rifle chattered and the shots stopped. Heat ran down into Cougar’s boot and his leg burned when he stepped hard on the gas with the van set to drive.

He hit one body, then another, cranked the wheel to the left as he came around the loop as tightly as the van would let him. He scraped the wall but kept the van under control in spite of the way the wheel pulled.

“Lights,” Jensen said tightly. Cougar flipped the headlights on without thinking twice. He lit up three men and their car, watched as they went down like someone swung a scythe through grass. “Move over.”

And then he was right there, opening the driver’s side door and shoving the HK into Cougar’s hands. Cougar slid out of the way, propelled by Jensen’s hand on his hip, and Jensen took over the wheel. Jensen stepped on the gas and swerved around the sedan. Cougar put the window down.

“Numbers?”

“Someone’s supposed to be right behind them.” Jensen braked then made the loop onto the down ramp with more grace than Cougar had managed. A set of headlights swept the first floor like a spotlight. Jensen swerved and went down the up ramp. “Don’t miss.”

“Shut up and drive.”

Jensen took the next turn so fast that the tires screamed in protest, straight into the column of the other car’s headlights. Cougar leaned out the window and opened up. Driver first, then the left front wheel. Jensen kept the wheel straight, foot on the gas. The car coming at them accelerated and swerved to run right up the outer barrier of the garage and over. Seconds later, the arm of the attendant’s booth shattered across the van’s grill, then the downpour slammed the roof like a million tiny fists.

“You hit?”

“No.” Cougar couldn’t get his head around any other answer. He cranked the window back up as the rain battered his face and shoulder.

“You lying?” Jensen reached across to run a hand over Cougar’s chest.

“Leg. Below the knee.”

“God damn it.”

“You?”

“Cut myself worse the other day.” Jensen slowed to a reasonable pace, then took a sharp right into a darkened gas station parking lot then cruised into the shadows behind the building before coming to a stop. “Let me see your leg.” He flipped on the interior light.

“It can wait.” In the weak glow, Jensen’s blood was thin black streams tracking over his jaw and down his throat.

“Fuck you, you just said you weren’t hit at all.” Jensen pulled a flashlight from his jacket pocket and shone it down into the footwell, leaning over to look for the damage. “I can’t fucking trust you, can I?”

“Did your friend there sell us out?”

“Benito? No, he worked for a petty chop shop. He’s nobody. Was nobody. Christ, he was just a kid and I got him killed.” Jensen elbowed Cougar in the gut. “Goddamn it, Coug, cooperate. At least put your seat back.”

“It hit my knife.” Cougar wriggled to get his boot up on the dash, then tugged out the knife. The hilt was mangled where the bullet took a bite out of it. “Just give me something to wrap it with for now.” Jensen produced a folded bandana from somewhere and Cougar wrapped his calf twice, then knotted it. “You didn’t get him killed. Shit happens.”

“I’m tired of it.” Jensen sagged back into his seat. “I’m tired of shit. I’m tired of it all being so fucking cheap. He was just a fucking kid.”

“Cheap?” Cougar took a moment to check over the new gun.

“Life.” Jensen flipped off the light, then started the van. “We have to get back, make sure they’re not already at our place. If I lose those computers and motor, I’ll have to start from scratch.”

Cougar wanted to argue with him but he wasn’t good enough with words to make it work, not ones that had to come out of his mouth, anyway. Especially not in the face of all the evidence. Jensen needed words sometimes. Cougar couldn’t come up with anything.

“Sorry,” he said at last, because it was bigger than anything else in his head.

“Aren’t we all?” Jensen wiped the back of his hand across his face and, in the light from an oncoming taxi, it came away red.


	12. Paradigm Shifts (#9. Exchanging Gifts)

“How deep is the shit we’re in?” Pooch was hot on Jensen’s heels as they wound through the press of passengers in the Sagrado Corazon station.

“Neck deep and getting deeper.” Jensen hadn’t slept. His nerves burned under his skin, the tape on his cheek itched, both guns he wore now were weights pulling him down.

“Where’s Cougar?”

“Left him behind. He took a bullet to the leg last night.” Jensen took one of Pooch’s bags and slung it over his shoulder. “Need you to do a patch job on the van. Bullet holes are a little obvious.”

“Christ.”

“Did you get the stuff from the box?” Jensen rattled down the to-do list in his head.

“Cleaned it out. Are we taking a cab? I hate cabs.”

“You might want to save some of that. There’s a lot to hate going on around here these days.” Outside the station, Jensen flagged one of a multitude of cabs and held the back door for Pooch. “Welcome to Puerto Rico.”

They were squatting in the top floor of a half-finished office building. It hadn’t been Jensen’s first choice or even his second but, if Max’s people were onto them, he couldn’t pick the obvious options. Development on the building had stalled when the builder filed for bankruptcy but it was still risky.

Someone would eventually notice the power drain or a conscientious security guard might take it upon himself to walk all the way up to the twenty-fifth floor. Then there were the issues of lighting and plumbing--both of which were non-existent. They’d make do. They always did.

“Cougs.” Pooch dropped his things and greeted Cougar with a handshake that turned into a hug, at least on Pooch’s end. “Got yourself shot, esse? That’s what happens when we let you down on the ground.”

“Shit happens,” Cougar grunted, shrugging off the hug. “Welcome to Puerto Rico.”

“We need the van operational so I can pick up that dish.” Jensen put Pooch’s bag down and gestured around. The room was hung with tattered plastic sheeting that rattled in the wind, the only furniture was a few army cots, a couple folding chairs, and Jensen’s work bench. He pulled out the box with the staple gun and nail gun he’d found on the fourth floor in a closet. “Need to put up blackout paper so I can run the lights at night. There’s rolls of tar paper down the hall.”

“Go fix the van,” Cougar limped over to check out the staple gun. “I’ll put up the paper.”

Jensen wanted to argue that Cougar had a hole in his damn leg but he kept his mouth shut. “Downstairs, Pooch. Found putty, expanding fillers, and fibreglass tape. I can go get spray paint.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Pooch looked mighty nonplussed for a moment but he shook it off and put his sunglasses up on his head. “Show me what you two did to my van.”

There wasn’t much to say while Jensen helped Pooch patch up the van. Halfway through the sanding, though, Pooch stopped and pulled off his mask, pushed up his goggles. He picked up a bottle of water, drank, then stared at Jensen for a long time.

“What?” Jensen stopped trying to get the middle row of seats out. “Something on my face?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you two?” Pooch grabbed a clean rag to mop sweat and dust off his face.

“I don’t know.” Jensen gestured expansively. “Someone’s trying to kill us?”

“Someone’s always trying to kill us, man. Did you two have a fight?”

“No.” Jensen wasn’t going to talk about this. He didn’t even know what was wrong for sure. He just knew that he’d killed half a dozen people yesterday and that wasn’t even his job, killing people, not usually, and he wasn’t handling it well for some reason. Cougar getting shot was icing on the shit cake. Everything fucking sucked today.

“Whatever he did, let it go. He didn’t mean to make you mad.” Pooch snorted as he got back to work. “Hell, I didn’t know you could get mad.”

“Yeah. Well. Fuck me for not liking being responsible for copious amounts of death.” The bolt Jensen was working on snapped when he jerked the wrench and he ripped his knuckles open on the underside of the seat. “God. Damn. It.” He didn’t know how it happened but the next thing he knew, the seat was lying outside the van, he was out of breath, and Pooch was staring at him wide-eyed.

“Boy.” Pooch pulled off his mask and goggles, dropped the sander. “Boy, get out of there and sit your ass down before you hurt yourself.”

Jensen punched the van door on his way out, popping stitches in his finger to add to the busted knuckles, and threw himself down on a crate where he glared at Pooch and dripped blood on the floor. “I’m fine.”

“That’s the funniest thing you’ve said since I got here.” Pooch passed Jensen a bottle of water. “Whatever you’re pissed about, you’re wasting yourself on it. I need you focused or I’m gonna go back to the States in a wooden suit and then Jolene will kill me.”

“Yeah. I know. I’m sorry.” Jensen poured water over his hand to inspect the damage. Not too bad, really. Just surface wounds. “I’m not mad at Cougar. I’m mad he got shot. I’m mad the kid I was buying this van from got killed. I’m just fucking mad.”

“Well, glad you’re not mad at him. Don’t need him moping around like a sad puppy in addition to being pissed off. He takes getting hurt all personal. Wounds his manly pride. Especially if you got to shoot everyone.” Pooch sat down next to Jensen. “He’ll get over it.”

“I hate this.” Jensen tore strips off a rag with his teeth and used them to bind up his hand.

“What? Our whole fucking lifestyle? Funny time to start.” Pooch reached over and knotted off the bandages for him.

“No.” Jensen hated whatever was going on between him and Cougar.

“He’s not pissed at you if that’s what you’re worried about,” Pooch elbowed Jensen in the ribs and then got up. “Don’t think he could do it if he tried. He’s kinda fond of you, if you didn’t notice.” He looked over his shoulder with a speculative expression, as though he were gauging Jensen’s reaction.

“Why do you say that?” Jensen asked warily.

“I dunno.” Pooch got out the wrench to change the disk on the sander. He was doing what Jensen recognized as his ‘be cool, man’ act, which meant he was antsy about something. “His headcount just for ‘guys who look wrong at Jensen’ is pretty damn high.”

“I always figured that was because no one thinks I can keep myself from getting killed.” Jensen got up and picked up the seat he’d managed to get out of the van. A couple welds on the bottom and it’d make a decent chair for upstairs. “You know me. ‘Incompetent Jensen’.”

“Oh, fuck you, ‘Incompetent Jensen’.” Pooch flicked the old sander disk at him and Jensen ducked before it caught him in the head. “You’re one of us. Last thing you are is incompetent. You don’t always think like us but that’s not why he does it.”

“Whatever,” Jensen muttered, starting in on the bolts of the second seat. Maybe he should just cut them off.

“For a smart guy, you’re pretty stupid.” Jensen could hear Pooch’s eyes rolling.

“What? Why?” Jensen leaned over so he could see Pooch.

“If he’s being a pain in the neck, it’s just because he doesn’t want to look bad in front of you or he feels like he let you down.” Pooch paused with his mask half on. “I’m gonna give you a gift here, man. That guy upstairs is one blow to the head away from writing ‘Cougar hearts Jensen’ on his bullets if he doesn’t do it already. Whatever the hell you do with that is up to you as long as you’re not an asshole about it. But you two better hurry up and stop being pissed off at each other over nothing when we need to be working.”

Jensen stared at him for a long moment and Pooch stared right back, his expression challenging. Jensen broke first and dropped the wrench, then jumped out of the van.

“Fuck you. I knew that.” Jensen knew it but didn’t know it. Or knew it and didn’t fully believe it. Hadn’t integrated it. Hearing it from outside of himself, outside of the little bubble he’d shared with Cougar for the last weeks, crystallized everything and made it real. He didn’t stop to hear anything else Pooch said.

Cougar had the outer wall of the room they were using mostly papered over. He was coming back along the other side of the framing to create a denser barrier that would hold in sound as well as light. He was so damn exacting about everything he did. Didn’t have a damn clue how to let shit go, sometimes. Jensen was just going to have to do it for both of them. He could give Cougar that.

“Something wrong?” Cougar stopped and pulled off his goggles when Jensen came in.

“Yeah.” Jensen walked up and took Cougar’s face in his hands, kissed him hard. “That.” He kissed Cougar again. “Stop being pissed off at yourself,” he murmured between kisses. “You didn’t let me down. You don’t have to do everything for us. I can shoot people for us once in a while. I can deal.” It didn’t feel so bad when he thought of it like that, something he had to do for them both.

Cougar didn’t argue, just gave it up to Jensen like he trusted him, the tension running out of his body. He dropped the staple gun and put his arms around Jensen’s neck. Jensen pushed him up against a post and kissed him breathless.

“Now I’m going to go help Pooch get the van fixed up,” Jensen said, when he managed to make himself stop. “Because I don’t want him to hate me and I have to pick up that dish tonight. But. Later.” Where they’d find the privacy, he didn’t know, but they’d manage. They always did.

“Later. Go.” Cougar pushed Jensen toward the door but it was nothing like being pushed away.


	13. Shorthand Confessions (#30. Love Notes)

The storm the night before had left the air hot and sodden instead of cooling things down. Cougar limped out onto the roof at sunset, Jensen’s dinner in one hand, cane in the other. Pooch had made it from a steel rod with a tape-wrapped wooden cross-piece, then threatened to beat Cougar with it if he didn’t use it. That didn’t mean he liked it, it was a glimpse into a future coming at him like a train in which his body failed him and his aim went bad and he wasn’t himself anymore.

Jensen was bent over the satellite dish, hooking it up to the motor and to his computers on the floor below. He’d stripped off his shirt in the heat and the way he knelt left his curved back bare down past the slight swell of his hips as his faded cargo pants pulled tight across his ass. Cougar could have stood there for hours, just watching the muscles play under Jensen’s pale skin as he worked.

The intermittent winds at this height blew the door closed behind Cougar and Jensen jumped, one hand going to his gun.

“Hey,” he said, relaxing as he realized it was just Cougar. “You could have just called. I’d have come down.”

“I know.” But then he wouldn’t have gotten to watch Jensen at work.

“Sit.” Jensen pointed over at the camp chair he had set up near a crate with his computer and tablet propped up and running some kind of program, numbers spewing across the screen that probably meant plenty to Jensen and nothing to the rest of the world.

Cougar would have balked at the order from anyone else but he obediently collapsed into the chair. His leg was throbbing non-stop, hotter than the rest of his skin. If it was getting infected he was going to be really pissed.

“Empanadas and sorullos,” he said, offering the bag to Jensen. “And beer.”

“Thanks.” Jensen sat down at his feet and tore into dinner. He wasn’t the gawky kid who’d joined the team by a long shot. He had two inches and quite a few pounds on Cougar. “You eat?” Jensen asked through a mouth full of empanada.

“Yeah. Things going okay?”

“Issues with the board for the motor. I might have to do manual adjustments.” Jensen took his things off the crate and pushed it in front of Cougar. “Put your leg up.” Cougar did as he was told, feeling about fifty years old. He took a beer because that would make him feel a little more human.

“You know I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” he pointed out. Jensen had a tendency to talk about things like they were all supposed to get it. “This motor-satellite thing.”

“Max uses satellite phones for his agents. If I do it right I can track down the encrypted transmissions from this professor, crack them, and figure out what she’s sending to him.” Jensen shrugged like it was nothing. “Motor moves the dish to keep up with signals as things shift--satellite moves, Earth moves, phone moves. Board tells the motor what to do. Board doesn’t work, I have to do it.”

“Okay.” Cougar took a drink of beer to hide his smile.

“What?” Jensen looked suspicious.

“Nothing.” Cougar had a hell of a thing for smart people and Jensen was the smartest person he knew. “Keep talking, you won’t get any work done.” He handed Jensen the rest of the beer.

“Why?” Jensen was already back to being engrossed in the data coming across the screen of his phone. When Cougar didn’t answer, he looked over his shoulder. “Oh.” His cheeks darkened and he turned back to his work.

“Could sleep up here tonight if it doesn’t rain again.” Cougar slouched down in the chair, let his head fall back. At least up here there the air moved. “You need to sleep.” He’d been useless last night, stuck letting Jensen do all the work.

“I’m okay.” Jensen had abandoned his food and was bent over the motor again, referencing his phone while he worked. And that was it, he was lost in it again.

Cougar gave up and pulled out his own phone. Now that they were on the move, they were back to using a fresh set of smart phones. And, appealing as it was to watch Jensen work, the little wriggle of his hips as he hummed under his breath and adjusted something on the board, Jensen couldn’t go on without sleep. If things went to shit, they might not get a chance again for days.

-You need to sleep,- Cougar typed, then sent the message. It was cheating but when Jensen was working, he wasn’t listening.

Jensen tilted his head, frowned at his phone. After a moment, he picked up the phone and typed something in. -One more thing.- He shoved the phone into his back pocket, effectively cutting Cougar off for the moment.

Cougar weighed his options as he finished off the open beer. The wind tugging at his hair was getting cooler as the sun went down. He took off his hat, hung it from his knee, and undid his ponytail to feel it. The city noises were persistent, even up here. The scope of everything had changed. From up here, Cougar could see the glint of the sea in the distance. Beyond that, America and Max.

The world had swallowed them up again so quickly. It felt as though, if they weren’t careful, it would spit them out in pieces. The least he could do was make sure Jensen didn’t help it along.

“Can I help?” he asked when Jensen sat back on his heels as though he were done. Not likely, but worth asking.

“It’ll be boring. Just watching this.” Jensen held up the tablet as he shuffled over on his knees to show Cougar. It looked like he was playing an old game on it. There were two ‘dials’ and a green on black display of what looked like the sky and horizon. “Here. The dish needs to be aimed at this area around the zenith. It’s not really the zenith but it was easier to do it like this. If the target goes out of range, the arc flashes red. I’ll add a beeper to it. You bring it back in line with the controls.”

“You just made this up?” Cougar slid his finger over one of the dials on the screen and the motor hummed, the dish turned.

“I had time to work on it before.” Jensen shrugged it off. “I need to partially recode the board if it’s going to be fully automated. I didn’t get all of my math right for where we ended up. I should have left myself more options, but I was trying to save time and we all know how well that works.” He snorted derisively and got to his feet, beer in hand, turning his back on it all as he walked to the edge of the roof. His irritation with himself was written clearly in the set of his shoulders.

Cougar watched him go, then he pulled out his phone again. It was too far across the roof to talk without raising his voice.

-Stop it.-

-What?-

-Beating yourself up.-

-Should have got it right first time.- Jensen cast a glance over his shoulder, the red setting sun glinting off his glasses was as good as a glare. -Hate when I’m stupid.-

-You’re brilliant.-

Jensen stood there a long time, staring at his screen, so long that Cougar wondered if he were looking at something else all together.

-No arguing,- Cougar sent without waiting for a response. He could express himself better this way than speaking, better in Spanish than English. Jensen would work it out. He probably had a translator on the phone already. -Your mind is beautiful, like the rest of you. The way you are is what I want.-

Jensen tucked his phone into his pocket and came back slowly. Cougar searched his face and body for insight into his thoughts but only found uncertainty and conflicted emotions. He put his phone away as well as Jensen stopped in front of him and crouched down in front of him to look him in the eyes.

“I mean it,” Cougar said steadily. Jensen just leaned in to kiss him, his hands on the buckle of Cougar’s belt. “I’ll write it down.”

Jensen kissed over Cougar’s jaw to his throat while he undid Cougar’s belt and fly. His kisses were fierce and insistent. When he got up under Cougar’s ear, he bit him there and made all the thoughts go out of Cougar’s head.

“Fuck.” Jensen’s skin was hot under Cougar’s hand curled around the back of his neck. He kept Jensen close, tilted his head to give Jensen more access to bite him again.

“Not this time.” Jensen bit him again and made him shudder. He got Cougar’s fly undone, peeled his jeans and briefs down so that he was bare to the night air. Jensen kissed him on the mouth one more time, then went down on him all at once, without hesitation. He was relentless from the start, unexpectedly certain of what he was doing, all heat and tongue and suction and the slightest touch of teeth.

Cougar swore, grabbed the chair under him to keep his hands off Jensen’s head, kicked the crate out of the way. His boots grated on the rooftop as his hips came up in spite of his best intentions. The sky above him was an incredible shade of dark blue but the stars in it were all his own.

Jensen’s purr shook him through, forced him to look down at Jensen’s mouth on him, the bright spark of pleasure in Jensen’s eyes. That was gorgeous and obscene at once. Jensen’s lips were so sleek and full, his expression was pure pornographic indulgence. The muscles of his shoulders shifted as he let go of Cougar’s jeans with one hand and reached down to undo his own zipper with a metallic sound that echoed Cougar’s sense of reality parting.

Cougar could hear himself speaking in Spanish, the whispered words pouring out as Jensen started to jerk off. His mind was overflowing with how hot Jensen was, how beautiful, how perfect, how fucking _everything_  he was, and then he was coming. Twenty-five floors up, he still should have been quiet but he couldn’t stifle himself.

As soon as he could control his limbs, he got Jensen by the nape of the neck and pulled Jensen’s mouth off his cock to kiss him. Jensen crawled up and straddled his lap, the chair creaking dangerously under them. Cougar ignored it, pushing Jensen’s hand away so that he could get Jensen off while he kissed the taste of his own come out of Jensen’s mouth.

Jensen grabbed his shoulder with one hand, got a fist full of Cougar’s hair in the other. Gasping against Cougar’s lips, he fucked Cougar’s hand until he started to shake and come. He pulled his mouth away, buried his face in Cougar’s hair, bit the curve of Cougar’s neck hard as he came all over Cougar’s belly. Afterward, he was limp and heavy in Cougar’s arms. Cougar wrapped his arms around Jensen’s back and held on, breathing in time with him, eyes closed.

Jensen kissed the spot he’d bitten and murmured, “Sorry.” He straightened up, settled his glasses back in place.

“Don’t be. Should do the same to you. Leave you a note you won’t forget. So you believe me.” Cougar reached down beside the chair and found his hat, put it on Jensen’s head. It looked pretty damn good. Jensen looked pretty damn good all over wearing nothing but undone cargo pants, jump boots, Cougar’s hat, and the flush from his orgasm.

“I do. You wouldn’t lie about that.”

“Not to you. Not about anything. Not anymore.” There wasn’t anything left to hide.

 


	14. Ourselves Under Pressure (#22. A Wedding)

“Jensen. Sleep. Bed.” Jensen’s headphones were peeled off and someone was shaking him by the shoulder. Cougar. “I’ll come with you if I have to.”

Jensen rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on his screens. The uncooperative numbers swam across his vision in schools, like fish. “Sex is not the answer,” he mumbled, batting at Cougar’s insistent hand.

“That’s just sad, man,” Pooch said from somewhere off in the shadows beyond the edge of Jensen’s awareness. “Not that it’s my place to say, but at least one of you is doing it wrong if it’s not the answer.”

It was dark. Jensen had no idea if that meant it was night or if they’d shut down the lights to cool things off in here. He was aware of sweat trickling down his spine and ribs, his glasses sliding down his nose. Being stripped down to shorts didn’t cool him off so much as it saved on laundry. The big fan running did nothing but stir the stifling air. All the cooling efforts were going to the computers.

“Almost got this one.” It was a fight every time to keep up with the shifting encryption Max was using on his phones. More frustrating was a secondary signal with a similar signature that occasionally overlapped with and confused the transmission coming from the Alicea phone. Like the Alicea phone, it was coming from within Puerto Rico and from a single location. If he could track it back to the source, he’d have a better chance of excluding it. “Max has two contacts here. I just have to sort them out.”

“Two?” Cougar leaned over Jensen’s shoulder as though he could make sense of the mess of math and code Jensen was facing down. His long hair spiralled down to tickle Jensen’s neck and Jensen shoved at some part of him that yielded with a grunt of annoyance.

“Yeah. Just. Thirty. Okay?”

“Half an hour,” Cougar said in his ear. “Or I cuff you and throw you in the back of the van, let Pooch take you for a ride somewhere.”

“I hate that,” Jensen muttered. Back of the van was better than the trunk of a car, but it would still suck. Clay had invented the punishment years ago and everyone hated it. Especially Pooch, because he didn’t get to drive on top of everything else.

“What is wrong with you, man?” There was a thud as the front two legs of Pooch’s chair hit the floor. Jensen didn’t have to see it, he knew the sound. “You are definitely doing things wrong if that’s all you get from hand--ow, damn it, Cougar!” Jensen didn’t have to see that either. Sounded like an empty soda can to the head.

“You assholes. Fuck off before I shoot you both.” For a moment, Jensen was actually afraid he might, and that cleared his head more than anything else. He put his headphones on and cranked up Gogoroth so he could focus. Nothing like the classics. Being pissed off at both of them and himself actually helped, that and some of the code fragments he was being fed by ‘friends’ on underground websites devoted to antigovernment hacking.

It took him well more than half an hour but no one interrupted him again until he pulled off his headphones and watched his work run. The white noise of the fans around him was deafening.

“Done?” Cougar was a blurry shadow to his right.

“Yeah. It’s got to run for a while but I should have both recent captures and the locations down. This equipment is shit, by the way.”

“You’ve mentioned. Come on.”

Jensen needed Cougar’s hand to get up, then he needed it to keep from going down to his knees. “Sorry I said I was going to shoot you.” The image of what that would have looked like was horrifyingly vivid in his mind’s eye, blood crawling over the floor like black worms. He wondered if the floor here were level or if it had a slope for the blood to run down. “I wouldn’t.”

“Come on.” It was just a few steps to the cot where Cougar let him collapse in a heap. “We know,” Cougar said as he took Jensen’s glasses away and put them aside.

“Where’s Pooch?”

“Reporting to Clay, then dinner.” The cot shifted as Cougar slid in beside him. Like Jensen, he was stripped down to almost nothing and sleek with sweat. “Miss your cooking.”

Jensen lay very still, adjusting his frame of reference. Cougar was taking care of him. Not terribly new. In bed with him. Very new. Missing his cooking. Just surreal. He put one hand over Cougar’s on his chest. “Me, too.”

A wave of homesickness for that tiny fragment of domesticity they’d shared washed over him. He’d always laughed at his sister and her ridiculous, girly ‘wedded bliss’ that she still claimed hadn’t faded. He remembered her face when she got married and how much he’d envied her even as he hadn’t believed it was real.

He’d never seen it as a kid, never been sure it existed outside of stories, never thought it had anything to do with him. The whole wedding had seemed at best like the ritual of another race entirely, at worst like a pantomime--until he understood it for himself. He still wasn’t sure it lasted for anyone but he’d been happy in a new way for a short time and he missed it.

“Go to sleep, Jensen,” Cougar murmured. “Turn off the brain machine.”

“I’m asleep. I’m not moving. See?” Jensen lay very still with a little more determination this time. It was hard to fall asleep on command, no matter how tired he was. “Sleeping like a motherfucker.”

“Breathe, then.” Cougar propped himself up and ran his fingers through Jensen’s hair. “Remember the rifle?”

Jensen had been new then and Clay was all about ‘cross-training’ his raw recruits. Clay’d decided that Jensen should be able to shoot every damn gun they owned and Cougar had gotten saddled with him. “I was shit.”

“You got better.”

“You taught me.” Jensen remembered it like it was yesterday, now that Cougar had brought it up. It had been cold out at the range. They’d been in DC. November. He hadn’t dressed quite warmly enough for lying dead-still and belly-down on a table in the wind and fresh falling snow, waiting for the shot. Cougar had been right next to him. He’d been warmer on that side, sheltered from the cold. “Don’t know how.”

“You listened. What’d I say?”

“Shut out everything but the shot. Breathe.” He’d been able to hear Cougar’s breathing over the open mic wired through his protective headset. It was the only sound in the world right then, he couldn’t even hear his own breath. He could see the target clearly, still. He was just waiting for the cue to take his shot. “Aim. Breathe. Act. But first. Just breathe.”

Cougar lay back down with him and Jensen could feel the slow rise and fall of Cougar’s chest against his arm, the brush of Cougar’s breath against his neck. “Do it now.”

“I can’t sleep long. When the program finishes...”

“I’ll stay awake.”


	15. Aliens and Ghosts (#24. An Old Flame)

Cougar wasn’t happy. The mission was going about as well as could be expected. The heat wave was cooking them all slowly but that was nothing new. Clay and Aisha were on their way in today. No. He wasn’t happy about Jensen. He sat on the floor to clean and reassemble a new rifle--Pooch had got hold of an FNH SPR-USG rifle for urban hostage response from somewhere and shipped it to Puerto Rico via ‘channels’--but what he was really doing was watching Jensen pace and talk to himself as he listened to whatever was coming through his headphones.

Sleep had improved things briefly when Cougar won out and got him settled. He’d never seen Jensen work like this, struggle for every tiny victory. When it’d happened before, he’d been out in the field, waiting for a target. The longer he watched, the more it sunk in that Jensen was using the equivalent of a flintlock to take out a moving target in armour at five hundred meters... and managing on the back of not just how smart he was but how damn stubborn, how much sleep he could go without, how much caffeine he could handle. The computers overloaded and shut down, the dish motor choked in the heat, the program had needed rewriting, but Jensen kept going, and he was the human component to it all.

Cougar couldn’t actually help. He could barely help before when Jensen was starting to flounder back in their brief life together. Now he was fucked and the more ragged Jensen got, the more he rambled, the more it put Cougar on edge.

He tried, every day, not to think about the times he’d watched people come apart or, worse, the times he’d only seen it in retrospect. It happened. It was the job. Some people retired. Some people retired themselves.

“She’s head of the renovations committee for Arecibo Observatory, we already knew that,” Jensen stopped and stared at his screen. “According to the data I have, she’s working for Max. On an alternative project. Whatever it is, she’s got the plans done. They’re in her home, in a safe. She’s waiting on something from Max. Christ, she’s so vague. She sounds tense.” He looked over at Pooch, stopping with his hands in his too-long hair. “Do you know what Max could do with that thing if he had it?”

“That thing?” Pooch looked up from the coolant system he was working on. It involved copper tubing and ice and plastic garbage cans. Cougar didn’t have a clue even after Pooch explained it. He didn’t care, either, except Jensen seemed happy about it.

“Radio telescope. It’s got a dish a thousand feet across. It can hear just about _everything_. It can locate a point of broadcast anywhere on the Earth from the signals that bounce off the moon.” Jensen squinted at the computer. “They’re even looking for aliens with it.”

“Max is not recruiting aliens.” Pooch rolled his eyes and went back to work. “When Clay gets here, we’ll go get the plans. Okay?”

“He’s not going to just do anything with it the way it is now,” Jensen muttered. “You don’t just borrow something like that. Every minute of its use is booked. I went through everything they’re working on and nothing is Max-level bullshit. The guy’s not into the sciences for nothing, so what the hell.”

“Maybe you should take a break,” Pooch said reasonably.

“No.” Jensen shook his head and all but dove back into his chair. “I have that other set of signals to work on. The secondary set going to Max.” He pulled up the street view of a financial services office building. “It’s coming from in there. You should check it out.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Cougar said, daring to look away from Jensen just in time to avoid catching his finger in the bolt-action system. He was getting careless. “Max has investments worldwide.”

Jensen’s head snapped around so fast that Cougar heard his neck crack. “And if it’s important and Max, I don’t know, blows up a school bus full of kids, you’re okay with that? You’re good with just throwing away, what? One more kid? Twenty-five more kids? Is there a line where suddenly we give enough of a shit to do the extra work?”

“Okay, someone needs a time out.” Pooch put down the copper coil he was making and got to his feet. “Or I’m going to pull the plug on Mr. Generator over there.”

“No.” Cougar didn’t remember getting up, but he was standing. “He’s right. I’m wrong. We’ll check it out.”

“Yeah, you will.” Jensen turned around again to face his screens. “And if you pull that plug, Pooch, I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

Pooch was inhaling to say something but the air went out of him and he looked over at Cougar. “I could use some help clearing the van before I get Clay and Aisha.”

“Sure.” Cougar left the gun--what was one more when there were so many about--and limped after him. “Be right back,” he said to Jensen. No response.

“Okay,” Pooch said once they were in the elevator. They’d spent half a day getting it running all the way to the top. “I’m going to go out so you two can have sex or whatever the hell will improve his mood.”

“No.” Cougar wanted to crawl out of his skin. “Leave it.”

“Seriously, man. For the team. Before Jensen kills us all in our sleep. Just fuck, get it out of your--“ Cougar didn’t know he’d hit Pooch until Pooch was getting up off the floor and coming at him. “What the hell, man?” Cougar slammed up against the wall with all Pooch’s weight on him, twisted just in time to avoid a knee to the groin and took it off the thigh instead. “Fucker.” Pooch’s fist caught him in the mouth, a glancing blow as Cougar shoved him off. Still, he tasted blood.

“Enough.” Cougar held up his hands as the elevator lurched to a halt in the basement. “Just. Go. Errands. Clay. Whatever.” Pooch spat blood on the floor at Cougar’s feet and stepped out.

“I’m going. I don’t need your crap.” As the elevator doors closed, Pooch smacked a hand against them and yelled, “You better fucking fix this, Cougar. We don’t need Roque happening all over again or some shit.”

Cougar sagged against the wall and tried to figure out what the hell just happened. Damn it, Clay was coming back to a mess. They didn’t need Roque happening again. Maybe Roque was the first piece to fall. The rest of them were just falling slower. He stepped off the elevator and back into the main room to find Jensen standing with the keyboard in one hand, typing with the other, muttering to himself.

Everything surfaced in the end, no matter how you tried to bury it. Cougar had buried enough people that some of them were going to come around again. As much as he tried to tell himself that was then and this was now, he kept blurring the two. He set up his new gun and broke it down again while Jensen worked on, only getting up once in a while to fill a glass panel with notes to himself and pieces of code.

Eventually, Cougar broke and headed for the roof top. He sat on the edge and watched the city slide into darkness. A spider climbed over his hand and he flicked it out, watched it fall until he lost sight of it a little more than a story down. After that, he watched people moving below. They were nothing from up here. Spiders. Roaches. Ants. A trigger pull and gone. No guilt. He could do it. Some people couldn’t.

He heard the creak of the elevator echoing up the shaft. Clay was back. Eventually he’d have to go in and deal with the fact that he’d let Jensen get broken and then punched Pooch in the face. Eventually. Hinges squeaked ominously. Unless Clay got to him first.

“Talked to Pooch. Saw Jensen.” The door to the roof slammed shut behind Clay. “I know what this is about.”

“Don’t.” He’d been expecting Clay to come out yelling. This was worse, Clay actually paying attention. Remembering the things Cougar wanted to forget.

“Too bad. You’re going to get in bed with someone on my team, I’m going to get in your business.” Clay’s boots grated on the rooftop. “Especially since you’re on my team. So was the person you’re thinking of. It was my fault more than yours, anyway.”

“Not this.” Cougar already knew what Clay was going to say and he didn’t want it in his head. He’d put damn hard work into putting it out of his thoughts.  
  
“You need to hear it.” Clay sat down next to him and offered him a cigarette. “This isn’t like Evans, Coug. This is Jensen. He talks about every damn thing if you’ll only listen. Usually even if you won’t. He’s not going to blow his brains out in a cheap motel room. He might take us with him, but he’s not leaving us behind.”

Cougar took the cigarette dumbly and let Clay light it. “Evans wasn’t... we weren’t...” He could still see it. Smell it. The idea of Jensen ending up that way made him want to vomit.

“Fucking. I know. He was your partner on the team for five years. I miss plenty. I didn’t miss that.” Clay took a drink from his flask, then pushed it on Cougar. “Drink up. Fucking doesn’t mean shit about whether or not you love someone. You can love someone like it’s for the rest of your life and never do more than shake hands.”

It was whiskey in the flask and it burned all the way down to Cougar’s belly, a different heat than the oppressive night air. “I’m sorry about Roque.”

“Me too. I’m sorry about Evans. Sorry I never said so.” Clay shook his head. “I was going through kind of a phase then. Being an asshole.”

“Was?” Cougar glanced over at Clay who took a beat to react, then he laughed and elbowed Cougar in the ribs.

“Fuck you. This is what I get for being all sensitive with you guys?”

Cougar shrugged and took another drink of Clay’s whiskey. “You made us, Colonel. You did this to yourself.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty proud of myself, overall.” Clay grinned at him, took the flask back, and drank. “Most of the time. Other times I think I should retire to some little island and pretend this never happened.”

“Doesn’t your girlfriend get to kill you then?” Cougar took the punch on the arm, laughing, he deserved it.

“You are spending way too much time with Jensen. Smartass.” Clay shook his head. “I didn’t know someone could literally rub off on someone else.”

“Those women were all crazy _before_  they got to you?”

“Abuse.” Clay rolled his eyes and gave Cougar the flask again. “I’m a magnet for abuse.”

“I don’t need to know what you do in bed, man.” Cougar took a drink, then winked at Clay. “Though. Not surprised.”

“I cannot believe I missed you guys,” Clay grumbled. He got to his feet, slower than he used to. None of them were getting younger. “Just talk to him. Not the way you talk to me, asshole. Keep the booze. You might need it.” He dropped his cigarette and ground it out under his boot heel. “Oh, and Cougar?”

“Yeah?” Cougar had to tilt his hat back to see Clay’s face.

“You hurt him, we’re gonna have a problem. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Cougar knew an order when he heard it, even if they weren’t soldiers anymore. “I’d hope so.”

“Damn right.” Clay tromped off, leaving Cougar in the dark.

As easy as it was to talk shit to Clay, and he’d had years to perfect it, Cougar had no idea how to talk to Jensen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to say that this is the halfway point and I wasn't sure I'd make it this far. Very happy to know people are reading along and having fun. I have a vague plot arc in the back of my head and I'm still just rolling for a random prompt and responding to it. Sometimes things surprise me, sometimes they startle me, sometimes they jump me from behind in a dark alley... It's been a blast so far and I hope things keep going this way.


	16. The Kids Aren't All Right (#25. Brutal Honesty)

“Hey, geek squad.” Aisha’s greeting and hip-bump against his shoulder were enough to--gently--startle Jensen out of his hacker-haze. “You need to eat something. Drink something that’s not this shit.” She wiggled an empty can of energy drink at him, then threw it away.

“Not hungry.” Jensen pulled off his headphones and rubbed his hands over his face. He’d gotten some sleep, then the dish motor had seized up again. He and Pooch had spent hours replacing parts and trying to make sure it wouldn’t happen anymore.

“You look like a dead man.” Aisha ran her hand over his hair as she turned away. The flicker of--what, affection?--was comforting and uncomfortable at once. “And you smell about as good. Come on. You’re getting up. Ten minutes. Guys are off checking out that building you were making noise about. They’ll never know.”

“I’m working on this.” Jensen pointed at the fragments of a transmitted photograph he’d managed to capture before the motor went out. Reassembly was going slowly.

“And the aliens are going to get us if you don’t figure it out or something. I know.” Aisha spun his chair around so that Jensen was looking up at her, not the screen. She looked worn out, dark circles under her eyes and her hair scraped back in a ponytail. Her grubby white T-shirt exposed her too-sharp collarbones and her crumpled khakis hung off her hips. “You look like complete crap, Jensen. I mean it.”

“So do you. What the hell?”

“You work with Clay. There are usually four of you to put up with his shit.” Aisha grabbed Jensen’s wrist and pulled him up out of the chair. “Me? I’ve had him all to myself for weeks. Not as fun as you’d think.”

“Awww, all the amazing sex with my boss getting you down?” Jensen muttered as she herded him toward the far side of the room, beyond the blackout paper. “I’m surprised you bother getting dressed at all. Didn’t you have that on yesterday?”

“We lost everything in Fiq. Clay has shit taste in friends. Don’t ask.” Aisha opened a door installed in the framing and shoved him out into piercing daylight barely softened by layers of plastic sheeting. Printing on the plastic tinted the light so everything was washed in pale yellow and green. “I hear you’re one to talk about banging someone on the team.”

“Fuck you. At least I’m actually supposed to be on the team.” There was a camp shower set up here, the heavy black water bag suspended at the corner of the building where it would get the most sun. “Besides, you can see how much sex I’m not having right this minute.”

“Whose fault is that?” Aisha pointed at the shower. “Get your ass in there. You might be getting laid if you didn’t stink like a corpse. I don’t know how you men can even breathe sometimes.”

“Fine.” Jensen shucked out of his shorts and stepped under the shower head, then flipped open the valve. If she didn’t want to see him naked she could damn well leave. Being on the team meant you had to put up with other people’s bare asses and bad habits. A light rain of lukewarm water came down on his head and shoulders and cooled him off. “Soap?”

Aisha rummaged through a bag standing open on a crate and found the soap, tossed it to him. “So, aside from not getting laid--which I know is your default state, so it’s not that--what the hell is up with you?”

“What do you mean?” Jensen stopped soaping up to give her an evil look. She was sitting on the crate, swinging her feet and bumping her heels against it like a kid. If she was going to give him shit about Cougar, he was going to drop her off the building and to hell with Clay.

“Not Cougar,” she said, as though she could read his mind. “Okay, I am a little surprised about that.” She rummaged around in the bag and came up with a battery-run beard trimmer that she flicked on and off, scowling at it.

“What, you think just because you aren’t interested in me, no one is?” Jensen turned his back on her and kept washing. It felt good to get the sweat and failure off his skin, as much as he hated to admit that she was right.

“No. Surprised by you, not him.” Aisha snorted derisively. “Please. I’m not blind like some people. I figured _you_  weren’t interested in _him_. Him? Not as subtle as he thinks he is. Men usually aren’t. Here, catch.”

Jensen turned around and had to give up the soap to catch the bottle of shampoo coming at his head. “Fuck you.”

“Oops.” Aisha gave him a wide-eyed innocent look. “You dropped the soap.”

“I hate you.” Jensen rescued the soap and put it with the shampoo bottle on a cross brace in the bare framing next to the shower. Then he turned off the water while he scrubbed shampoo into his hair. “Why wouldn’t I be interested in Cougar?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you just like the ladies. If it was me, I wouldn’t miss the chance to ride that train.” Jensen glared at her and she laughed, waving a hand dismissively. “Relax. Theoretically. I’m not going to steal your boo, even if I could. But that’s not what I’m talking about. That’s all good. I’m talking about you. Where’d you go, man?”

“I’m right here.” Jensen put the water back on to rinse off the shampoo. It was the stuff from the apartment he’d shared with Cougar and the scent memory was suddenly overpowering.

“No you’re not.” Aisha’s voice was so unexpectedly concerned, it made Jensen’s throat tight. “This morning, when you were working on the motor with Pooch, you said, and I quote: ‘Fuck you and fuck breakfast, Clay, if you don’t get that shit out of my face I’m going to put this screwdriver through your fucking head.’ That? Is not you. I only just know you and I know it’s not you.”

Jensen turned the water off and ran his hands over his head, wringing the water out of his hair. He barely remembered the words, just the sense of dread and frustration that spawned them.

“I don’t know what happened to you, J. Cougar and Clay keep looking at each other like they expect you to explode.” Aisha pulled a well-worn piece of towelling out of the bag and offered it to him. “If it was any of the shit that went down because of Max or Roque or whatever, I feel like I should apologize or something. All the time.”

“It’s not your fault.” Jensen scrubbed half-heartedly at his hair, then wrapped the towel around his waist. Drying off didn’t matter much when the heat and humidity would just leave his skin damp again in seconds. “There a mirror in there?”

“Yeah. Here.” Aisha pulled it out and held it up for him while he took the trimmer to tame the scruff getting out of hand all over his face. “You want me to cut your hair after? I’m good at it. Might make you look half-decent for once.”

“Sure.” His hair was starting to fall over his forehead, curl at the nape of his neck. He’d take what he could get. “What happened, it happened. Everyone makes their own choices. Clay. Roque. Max. Even your dad.”

“You?”

“Me.”

“So how come you’re not okay?”

“I’m f--“ Jensen stopped when he caught the laser beam glare of her eyes coming at him from behind the mirror. “I don’t know. Maybe because I’m a big pussy.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Aisha kicked him in the knee and Jensen nearly dropped the trimmer. “You’re not. You’re just not as crazy as these other bastards.”

“Ow, damn it, Aisha. And you like crazy?”

“Yeah. Some.” Aisha winked at him. “A lot. You were too nice for me. I don’t like puppies. Now, you’re getting kind of hot. It’s disturbing.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t want it to be wrong because it’s not wrong for anyone else.” Jensen focused on his jawline instead of anything else, like how he felt.

“Clay has nightmares,” Aisha said flatly. “Some kid with a teddybear. He says, ‘no, keep it, keep the bear’ and then he wakes up a few minutes later and he’s a mess and I pretend I’m asleep so he can pretend he’s okay. I do it a lot. Sometimes when he thinks I’m sleeping he says he’s sorry to me. That he didn’t know. We never say anything to each other when we’re both awake. We never talk. Eventually someone has to say something, J. Or we all end up like Roque. Or worse.”

“What are you going to do?” Jensen took the mirror from her and put it back in the bag. Aisha looked at her hands limp in her lap. “You’re not exactly hunky-dory either, missy.”

“I don’t know. It’s Clay, what can anyone do? I can’t be Roque, whatever Roque did for him. He can’t be my dad.” Her voice cracked but her expression hardened. No tears here. “Just don’t be such damn a _guy_  about it, Jensen. That’s an order.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“I’m trying to help you out, asshole.”

“Fine.” Jensen could deal with that. Talking to her was hardly awkward at all. She wasn’t going anywhere, neither was he, she had Clay to deal with, he had Cougar. They might as well be friends. No sense making life harder on either of them.

“Don’t tell Clay.” Aisha wouldn’t look at his face, she was busy digging in the bag again until she found a pair of scissors.

“I won’t. But you should.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged in a way that said ‘maybe not’ louder than words.

“You’re a hypocritical bitch, you know that?” Jensen made a face at her.

“I’m a hypocritical bitch who’s going to cut your hair, so you better be nice to me for right now.” Aisha jumped down off the crate. “You look like you should be in a boy band. Let’s do this before they come back and catch you naked and think we’re secret lovers.” She rolled her eyes dramatically.

“Yeah, right. I let someone play with my balls, I want them back when they’re done.” Jensen swung at her to smack her on the ass but she laughed at him and danced out of the way.

“Too slow, _mijo_.”


	17. Love, Encrypted (#3. Secret Language or Signals)

“All you have to do is slide it into the daily deliveries from UPS.” Jensen finished smoothing crumpled packing tape over a small, battered box, then handed it to Pooch. He looked haggard but he’d cleaned up at some point, looked like somehow he’d even managed to trim his hair. If he’d slept in the last twenty-four hours, it had been while Cougar and Clay had gone to reconnoiter the professor’s small estate. Cougar was just waking up, himself, after a restless few hours.

“I should have the bar code right,” Jensen said to Pooch. “It’ll get hung up in the mail room. That’s all I need, a way to get into their security systems from out here.”

Aisha was perched on Jensen’s work bench, fiddling with some wires and a timer. She was filling in for Roque pretty damn well by the look of it. She was also wearing a shirt Cougar was pretty sure was Jensen’s. No one else wore Scooby-Doo. Cougar was neither going to ask how she got it nor was he going to be pissed off with her about it. Then she gave him a sly little smile and that last part went right out the window.

“Got it.” Pooch was still in a bit of a mood. “I’ll be back.”

“Take Cougar. What was that photograph you were working on, Jensen?” Clay was pacing the floor, his white shirt plastered to his back with the heat. In spite of that, he was still wearing long black pants and boots.

Pooch gave Cougar a cool look but he leaned against the wall by the elevator and waited for Cougar to strap on a couple guns and grab his vest. He wasn’t taking the damn cane even if his leg was still giving him trouble. He refused to pay it any mind. Like any other part of him that wouldn’t get with the program, it could sit down and shut up.

“It was a piece of a set of blueprints.” Jensen slid back into his chair and brought the image up on the screen. “Best I can figure out is it matches a section of the Arecibo Observatory, only not quite. The radius it would have is wrong for the karst sinkhole that holds the present observatory.”

“So it’s for a second observatory?” Aisha hopped down to take a look over Jensen’s shoulder.

“I just need to match where. I’m running geographic data from satellites but unless I have the rest of the plans, it’s going to be hard to narrow down options.” Jensen slouched down in his chair and pulled off his glasses to clean them. “Especially since my processing power is shit. I’m sharing some of it out on an anonymous net but I’m still screwed.”

There wasn’t any way to wait around to grab a moment alone. Cougar joined Pooch in the elevator and they dropped down into the basement levels with an alarming chatter that the elevator had developed over the last half a day. The air in the lower levels was blessedly so much cooler than the top floor but wet, like Cougar could grab a handful and wring it out like a sponge.

“Someone should look at that leg,” Pooch said as he swung up into the front seat of the van.

“It’s fine.” Cougar settled into the passenger seat.

“Yeah, well. We need you in one piece. Don’t be stupid about it.” Pooch handed him the box.

Cougar looked down at it, then watched the garage go by as Pooch maneuvered them out and around to the least-visible exit. The breeze through the open window was something like cool, drying the sweat from his skin and making him feel almost human. Pooch kept looking at him, though, and it was starting to grate.

“What?”

“Sorry I made sex jokes about you and Jensen,” Pooch muttered. “Didn’t know you were actually worried.”

Oh. “Sorry I punched you in the face.”

And that was that. “You want to get coffee?”

“Please.” Cougar tilted his seat back, tipped his hat down, and relaxed. They were good again.

Cougar was setting himself up where he could watch the deliveries come and go so he could cue Pooch on when to step in and slide the package into the rest when his phone vibrated. Jensen.

-You okay?-

That was the last thing Cougar expected to read. He was worried about Jensen, not the other way around.

-Fine. Surveillance. 5 min right?- He paused, trying to think what else to say. -You?-

-I’m shit. 3.2, not 5.- Of course Jensen knew where the truck was. -It’s early.-

-You’re tired.-

-You looked mad when you left,- Jensen wrote, and he put a little sad face on the end. -:(-

-Not at you.- Cougar finished his coffee and looked around. Last thing he needed was to screw up this drop because he was talking to Jensen.

-At Pooch? Why’d you hit him?-

-No. Because. Later.-

Cougar tucked his phone away, then got up to wander the little outdoor plaza between buildings that let him have a clear view of the loading bay. As he was tossing out the cup, he caught a glimpse of the brown truck slowing down to turn down the rear driveway.

“Pooch, got it. Thirty seconds.”

Pooch was wearing a baggy blue maintenance worker’s jumpsuit, a battered baseball cap with _Estadio Hiram Bithorn_  emblazoned on the front, and sunglasses to obscure his face. A collection bag was slung over his shoulder and he was pushing a broom along the side of the building. Just another labourer.

“On it,” Pooch murmured. As the truck passed him, he followed it toward the bay.

Cougar waited until the driver stopped to talk to the mailroom clerk who met him at the door with a cart. “Go.”

Pooch didn’t look at the driver or the clerk. He swept past and Cougar, because he was watching so closely, caught the motion as he slipped the box onto the stack freshly off the truck. Done was done. Cougar scanned the area to make sure they hadn’t been observed, then walked away. His phone vibrated again.

-Done?- Of course Jensen would still be tracking the delivery truck time closely.

-All good.-

-You didn’t eat breakfast.- Jensen didn’t wait for a response. -There’s a panaderia about two doors down from where you are.- Cougar looked around and located it. -Their quesitos are really good. You like those.-

Cougar stepped into the little shop and picked up quesitos and mallorcas as well as a couple coladas. Everyone could use the caffeine and sugar. He felt lighter when he headed out to meet Pooch. In the van, he pulled out his phone again.

-Got it. On the way.-

-Fixing dish.-

“Dish is broken again,” Cougar said, digging into the bags from the panaderia.

“Goddamn thing. The servos need replacing.” Pooch took the handful of napkins Cougar offered him to mop his face and neck. He’d shed the disguise but was still glossy with sweat from wearing it over his clothes in the heat. “But we can’t get parts because of Max. The whole thing is shit. This is shit. I’m right. This is shit, isn’t it?”

“It’s shit.” Jensen had been right, Cougar was starving. He wolfed down a couple quesitos and poured out some coffee for himself and Pooch while they were stuck at an intersection.

“Tell him to stop working on it. I’ll fix it when we’re back.”

-Pooch says he’ll do it.-

-I’m fine.- Cougar had no idea how Jensen could sound pissed off in text, but he did. Cougar hunted around in his head for something he could say that would fix this. All he had was the obvious.

-You were right. I was hungry.-

Jensen didn’t answer for a minute. -Pooch can do it. Finger I cut up doesn’t do what I want.-

Cougar stared at the phone, wondering how he’d managed that. Even threats from Clay hadn’t gotten Jensen to let someone else do it last time.

“Everything okay?” Pooch pulled up at the next stoplight and turned to look at him over the rims of his sunglasses.

“He says you can do it.”

“Huh.” Pooch glanced at the phone, then at Cougar’s face. “Some kind of sorcery you’ve got there. Should pull it out more often.”

Cougar spent most of the ride back in silence, thinking. Silence, he understood. When he cut out the actual talking, or at least the words, he and Jensen talked all the time. Like Jensen getting up before him every morning, even if it meant only an hour’s sleep after working on his code all night, to make him breakfast. The sound of Jensen putting the coffee on first thing in the morning might as well have been a manifesto.

-Almost home now,- he typed as Pooch pulled into the narrow alley that led to the back of the work site. -Leg’s killing me.-

-I’ll meet you at the van.-

 

 


	18. Sleep and Other Drugs (#11. Sleeping Arrangements)

“Going downstairs.” Jensen bailed out of his chair and waved vaguely at Clay and Aisha. “If that red light by the keyboard goes on, text me. If anything starts smoking, unplug it all at the generator,” he said on his way to the elevator.

“What about zombies?” Aisha called after him. “What do I do if there’s a zombie attack?”

“Run faster than Clay.” Jensen stepped in and hit the button for the basement. “He’s old, you’ll be fine.” The door closed on Clay’s noises of protest.

The elevator was so slow. Jensen would have dithered around but it was making that alarming noise again. He fiddled with his phone instead, scrolling back to read Cougar’s last few messages. They didn’t usually text each other but, then again, they didn’t usually fuck, either.

The basement near the elevator was surprisingly cluttered with boxes from the apartment and everything Pooch and Clay had dragged in. Mostly tools and guns, a few pieces of surveillance equipment. Jensen thought he recognized the code on one box as being for a small remote plane that packed a camera and listening gear. He was poking around one of the crates Pooch had shipped, hoping to find some of his old computer repair tools, when the van pulled in.

“Everything okay?” Pooch looked startled to see him.

“Yeah, it’s fine. You might want to knock before you get off the elevator, though.” Jensen checked his watch. “They’ve been alone a whole ninety seconds.”

“You all suck.” Pooch swung out of the van.

“Teach Jolene to use a gun,” Jensen suggested, in spite of the particular finger Pooch was gesturing with as he gathered his things. “Then she can come with. We can get a tiny baby flak jacket. Little helmet... no?” He let it go because Pooch was now making ‘I’m going to end you’ motions on his way to the elevator.

“She should know how to use one,” Cougar said. He slid out of the van and offered up a bag from the panaderia. “Pooch has the rest.”

“Thanks.” Jensen took it and put it aside on the crate. He was more worried than hungry right now. “Let me see your leg.”

It was dark down here but Pooch had a couple lights set up so they could do repairs on the van. Jensen flicked one up and aimed it at the floor near the van. The brilliant white of the LEDs turned grayish in the humidity and a rainbow halo circled the lamp. Jensen wasn’t sure he’d ever be dry again. His lungs were starting to feel mouldy.

Cougar sat down on the van’s running board; Pooch had left the sliding door open. “You should eat,” he said, working his boot off. Where the leather wasn’t patched with duct tape over the bullet holes, Jensen could see old blood stains.

“When I know you’re okay.” Jensen dug around in a box from the apartment until he found the first aid kit. He needed to restock it anyway. Their routines had gone to shit since Roque died. That had to get fixed. Everything needed to get fixed.

Rolling up Cougar’s jeans was an unpleasant trigger for the memories of the night he’d been shot. Jensen’s gaze caught on his own hand, the wound down his forefinger that was held together with tape now since he’d eventually pulled out or broken all the stitches. It still cracked open and bled when he was working. The knuckles were scabbed from where he’d punched the van. The wrap over Cougar’s calf with black and brown with old blood. A thin, dry black line snaked out from under the bandages, down toward his calf.

“You’re walking around too much.” Jensen watched his hands shake as he unwrapped the bandages to take a look at the bullet wound. The flesh around the stitches was swollen and hot, it had to hurt like hell. “You shouldn't. You need to let it heal.”

“No time.” Cougar’s hands closed on his, then Cougar brought them to his lips and kissed each one. The act pierced something in Jensen’s chest, opening another half-healed wound.

He couldn’t breathe. An irrational surge of betrayal burned through him, anger bubbled up to cover the unwanted emotions struggling to surface. Cougar drew him in even as he tried to turn away and kissed his mouth this time. Jensen twisted his hands free, pushed Cougar down on the floor of the van, knocked over the first aid kit as he crawled over Cougar to kiss him again.

“Relax.” Cougar’s hands were gentle on his face.

“I can’t.” Jensen’s chest hurt too much.

“Then talk.” Cougar pulled him down so that Jensen’s head was on his shoulder and, by degrees, Jensen melted into him.

Jensen didn’t know what to say. Or couldn’t make himself say it. The words wouldn’t come out matter how he tried. All he could do was talk around it. “You’re worried about me. That’s pretty weird. New.” He rubbed his cheek against Cougar’s shoulder to soften his words.

“Not really.” Cougar kissed the top of Jensen’s head and it felt so good, that one little thing. “Just you knowing about it.”

“Not less weird, Cougar.” Jensen shifted so that he had one leg draped over Cougar’s thighs. “I miss sleeping with you. Also weird.”

“After one time?” Cougar sounded amused and Jensen could hear the little smile that had to be there right now.

“Yes. And you smiling.” Jensen pushed himself up to see it and caught it just as it faded. “You smiled more. Not a lot. When you smile, it’s like other people laughing. That’s why I like it.”

“You’re one to talk.” Cougar ran a rough, scarred finger over Jensen’s lips.

“I want to be okay. I’m trying, man.” Jensen sat up all the way, peeling his protesting body away from Cougar’s.

“Stop trying.” Cougar sat up as well and kicked off his other boot with a grunt of annoyance, then peeled off his socks and tossed them into the open mouth of the boot Jensen had removed, then dropped his hat over it. His black braid ran like a river down the valley of his spine and Jensen’s fingers followed it before he knew what he was doing.

Cougar leaned into him until he caved and put both arms around Cougar, holding on more than holding him. He buried his nose in Cougar’s hair, at the nape of his neck, and it smelled like home. “I want to be okay for you. Even if I have to fake it. But I’m shit at it.”

“Don’t.” Cougar laid open-mouthed kisses the down side of Jensen’s neck, leaving little cooling patches in his wake and sending shivers down Jensen’s spine. “Just don’t.”

“Why not?” Jensen’s words came out all rough.

“I’ll lose you.” Cougar straightened and caught Jensen’s chin in one hand, leaned in and kissed him so hard Jensen couldn’t breathe.

“You won’t.” Jensen kissed him back, hands full of his hair. “I hate this,” he said between kisses. He didn’t know what he was doing, undoing Cougar’s braid, undoing Cougar’s jeans, pulling off his own shirt, pushing Cougar down. “I hate not touching you. Everything would be okay if I could touch you. I want to go back to where I could touch you. Where we had a bed. I want to be with you.”

Before Jensen knew it, he was stripped to the waist, shorts undone, his dick sliding along Cougar’s belly. Where his glasses had gone was a mystery. Cougar was lithe and willing under him, when Jensen reached down to grab his hip, he was completely bare.

“Fuck.” Jensen hardly recognized his own voice. “Please. I need to.” He couldn’t articulate more, not while he was kissing Cougar’s chest and belly, licking the salt off his skin, leaving little swirls in the silky dark hair down his midline.

“Fuck me.” It was halfway between a demand and an offer.

“That. Yeah. Please.” Jensen shoved his shorts down and kicked them off as he kissed back up to Cougar’s mouth. “I really.”

“I know.” Cougar caught him with one hand around his neck and held him still to kiss him. “Me, too.” There had been lubricant packets of several kinds in the medical kit. Cougar must have found one because his fingers were cold and slick when they curled around Jensen’s erection.

“Oh, God, please.” He might have been the one doing the fucking but he was completely at Cougar’s mercy. Now. All the time. He didn’t want that to change. “Cougar.”

“Breathe.” It was so simple and still Jensen could hardly manage. Inhaling and exhaling were irrelevant when he was pushing into Cougar’s heat, his hands tangled in the wild silk of Cougar’s hair. He buried his face the curve of Cougar’s neck until Cougar’s hands were on his hips and Cougar was murmuring, “Move.”

The van floor was bare, rusting metal and chipped paint covered in a fine layer of grit from the roads that ground into Jensen’s knees and elbows. It was perfect, that tiny pain and all the pleasure of Cougar tight around his cock. When Jensen opened his eyes, he looked down at Cougar’s face, at his kiss-swollen mouth and his dark, dark eyes.

“Fuck me. Hard.” Demand or permission, Jensen couldn’t tell, didn’t care. “Don’t be quiet.”

Jensen hadn’t realized how desperately he needed it until the words were out of Cougar’s mouth. He was desperate for the burn of Cougar’s nails down his back, for fucking like this--bodies moving so hard and so recklessly that they rocked the van, for the taste of blood in their kisses. Between gasps and cries and kisses, he could hear Cougar’s ragged breath and the whisper of his own name. Cougar arched under Jensen, straining against Jensen’s weight and grip on his hair, came with a moan that echoed in Jensen’s ears.

“Don’t stop.” Cougar’s hand on his cheek forced Jensen to meet his eyes.

“I won’t, I won’t. I can’t.” Jensen turned his head, kissed and bit at Cougar’s palm. That wasn’t enough to stifle the words that rolled out in spite of his better judgment. “Oh, God, you’re everything. You’re amazing. I can’t believe... you. This. Please don’t stop touching me.”

When he finally came, it wrung him out head to toe and left him crumpled on Cougar’s chest, feeling hollowed out and vulnerable. He wanted to apologize, embarrassed by how naked his heart could get during sex. Then Cougar wrapped him up in a fierce hug and kissed his temple.

“You’re sleeping with me.”

“When?” There was so much to do. Jensen should be back upstairs doing it. He should, but he couldn’t move.

“From now on.”

Relief--unexpected and indescribable--washed over Jensen like a wave breaking over stones. Cougar wasn’t letting him go, not yet; Jensen would have to fight him to get up. All he could do was lie there and breathe. It occurred to him that he’d been lured into this by some clever manipulation on Cougar’s part.

“You sneaky bastard,” he mumbled into Cougar’s chest. “Does your leg even hurt?” He felt, more than heard, Cougar’s laughter. “Damn it, Cougar.”


	19. New Borders for Old Territory (#27. Insecurity or Jealousy)

Somewhere in their crated gear, Jensen found a hammock from their jungle expeditions and Cougar hung it as far from the computers as he could, then papered over the framing to block the light. It took all of minutes and he kicked himself, mentally, for not doing it sooner. The two of them could curl up there together, the mesh of the hammock let the air move around them, and they had some semblance of privacy.

After Pooch got the dish working and Jensen had his programs running again, Cougar herded him off to get a few hours of rest. Easier said than done as Jensen slid in and out of sleep, unable to relax completely. Hypervigilance was a curse on all of them. It had some small benefit, though. When Jensen was drowsy, he was completely without a filter and, sleeping with him, Cougar now got to experience it first hand. Couldn’t get away from it, either, even when it meant some inconvenience.

“Cougar?” Jensen’s hand wandered over Cougar’s chest, then he turned his head to kiss there as well.

“Mmhm?”

“Why didn’t we do this before?” Jensen’s soft lips and tongue found one of Cougar’s nipples and Cougar bit his lip to keep his mind on track. Why hadn’t they?

“Would have screwed things up.” That was probably it.

“Things are already screwed up now.” Jensen nuzzled, then kissed him again, this time with teeth.

“Yeah.” Cougar kissed Jensen’s hair. “Said we weren’t having sex in here. Remember?”

“Not having sex,” Jensen grumbled, sliding his hand between Cougar’s thighs. “Just. Touching. I like you. Why are you wearing pants? I don’t like pants. You shouldn’t wear them anymore.” Cougar’s laugh was a little tight as he removed Jensen’s hand and put it back on his chest.

“Are you even awake?”

“No,” Jensen muttered sullenly.

“Not doing this with you while you’re not awake.”

“You suck.” Jensen cuddled up to him and, moments later, snored.

Cougar sighed and looped his arm around Jensen’s shoulders, reminding himself that jerking off counted as sex--and it would wake Jensen up. The slightest movement would bring him back to consciousness and Cougar would have to start all over again. Cougar was starting to drift off himself when a shout woke them both.

“Jensen! Your program’s done!”

Jensen was out of the hammock in a flash, right over Cougar, elbow in his gut, knee in his thigh. He was halfway across the outer room, digging his glasses out of a pocket, before he asked, “Wait, what, which one?”

Cougar kept from being flipped out of the hammock, then followed with a little more dignity. He didn’t want to dislike Aisha, in spite of how she’d used them. Used Clay. They were used all the time, by one agency or another. No sense getting picky over who did the using. They could have walked away. Roque did.

But as his eyes adjusted to the brightness of Jensen’s screens and he could see her handing Jensen a cup of coffee, he couldn’t help the way his jaw tightened and his gut went cold. She was bright-eyed and pretty, if thin. He could understand why she’d want to move on from Clay, who slouched in a chair, feet up on a computer stack, snoring like an old bear. Jensen’s clothes looked good on her, his goofy cartoon T-shirt and the obnoxious blue and green floral shorts that should have been illegal when Jensen wore them, they were so short on him.

For all that she’d shot Jensen down without blinking at the start, Cougar understood that she’d been on a mission back then. Doing what she had to do. This, watching what he was doing with her chin on his shoulder and her arm around his neck, this either had an agenda he’d missed or it was the real thing. Fondness. They were both too damn young for this gig, if not now then when they’d started. Aisha laughed and kissed Jensen’s cheek, then cuffed the back of his head lightly as she straightened.

“You do so need to eat,” she said to him. “No one can live on sex. No matter how good it is.”

Cougar missed Roque right there with an intensity that made his skin prickle. There was a gap in the room, still. Roque would have peeled her off Jensen and dropped her in Clay’s lap without a word. Cougar listened, wondering if he could still hear Roque’s voice in his head. The man always had something to say.

“Is this a subtle message?” Cougar startled--that was Clay, not Roque. “You’re going to feed the skinny kid but not me? I’m wasting away here.”

“Hey, you’re not working,” Aisha pointed out. She put a couple empanadas on a paper plate and brought them over to Clay anyway.

“Fuck you, I’m not working.” Clay finally cracked an eye open to look at her. A smile tugged at his mouth. “You don’t know what work looks like. I’ll have you know my brain is working extremely hard right now.” He snagged Aisha with an arm around her waist and tugged her into his lap.

“Clay!”

“Besides.” He picked up an empanada and took a bit, talking through the mouthful unapologetically. “If the rest of me isn’t keeping busy, whose fault is that?”

“Oh. Poor _little papi_. I’m supposed to keep him entertained, is that it?” Aisha sorted herself out so she straddled Clay’s lap, facing him, leaning back against his knees. She took the empanada he was eating and bit into it. “You can’t play with him yourself?”

“I did not need to know you had a nickname for your dick, Clay.” Pooch shook the box of pastries at Cougar. “Now I can’t eat.”

“Well, someone better feed me because I’m doing fucking awesome work here,” Jensen grumbled. “I think I found Max’s second site. And my cunning plan to hunt down his agents in that finance building is underway. Goddamn it, appreciate me.”

Cougar grabbed the box from Pooch on his way over to Jensen. He slid the fingers of his free hand into Jensen’s short hair and tilted his head back to kiss him thoroughly and shamelessly. When he pulled away, Jensen sprawled bonelessly in his chair, staring up at him with wide eyes.

“I appreciate you,” Cougar said very quietly.

“You should do it more,” Jensen murmured breathlessly. “Like that. Maybe with more tongue but I really can’t complain. Hell, I can’t even feel my hands and feet.”

Cougar laughed at him and kissed his forehead this time. “You should eat. And show us what you’ve got for us. That there.” He nodded at the screen. “This is mine. I don’t share.” He tightened his hand in Jensen’s hair. Jensen’s eyes slipped shut, he shifted to lean into Cougar’s body and looped a limp arm around Cougar’s hips.

“All yours,” he said easily.

The cold in Cougar’s belly was gone, replaced by warmth that made him want to drag Jensen back to bed again. Later. There’d be time, later. He’d make some if necessary.

“Let’s see what you found.”

“Okay, first. Message between Alicea and Max. She’s finished the work, the plans are rendered, and she’ll be making a delivery in person when he gives her the go-ahead. Since he hasn’t gotten back to her we can assume it’s not in the next twenty-four hours.”

Clay’s boots thumped across the floor toward them. “Giving us time to take them from her.”

“Right, tomorrow’s a holiday and, since I hacked her schedule--free of charge, because I like you guys, I know she’s supposed to meet up with friends at the beach.” Jensen tilted his head back to grin at Clay. “We can just go pick it up.”

“Never say that,” Clay snapped, and Jensen’s grin faded. “That’s right up there with ‘What, you’d rather face fifty guys with AKs?’. We all know how well that turned out.” He kept scowling right up until he met Cougar’s icy gaze and took an inadvertent step back.

Cougar was beginning to understand Roque’s irritable streak all too well. He didn’t like it much, his job required calm. Distance. Detachment.

“Keep glaring like that and we’ll save a fortune on bullets,” Jensen murmured before lifting his voice to keep talking to Clay. “Anyway, the rest of what I was going to say before you turned into Grumpy Dwarf is I tracked Max’s people to the tenth floor of that building. I’m working on access to the data on their cell phones--the ones they use for things other than talking to Max--but it’s taking me a while. I’ll get through it.”

“Good. We’ll go tomorrow to get the plans, I want you with us,” Clay said. “Anything needs doing here, find a way to keep an eye on it from the road. Pooch, we need another vehicle. We’re all going. Call it a family trip.”


	20. It Begins with Your Family (#28. Celebrating a Holiday)

  
The rest of Puerto Rico had a holiday. The Losers were going to work. Jensen couldn’t have been happier. Back in the van with Pooch--in the back of the van, while Aisha rode shotgun, but Jensen was fine with that, his lap and the whole of the bench seat in the back were full of his gear. The windows were wide open, the rush of air coming in kept the van from becoming a hot box.

Cougar and Clay had taken a car up to the high ground behind Professor Alicea’s estate. That felt right, Clay in command, Cougar watching over them. The grind of Jensen’s boot against the van floor brought the memory of fucking back in a rush that made his cheeks hot. His elbows and knees were skinned and scabbed and every time they snagged fabric or cracked with his movements, he remembered why and it was almost as good all over again. He was fucking crazy about Cougar, crazy about fucking Cougar, and on the verge of failing like hell to keep it all contained.

“Comms still clear?” That was Clay, shaking him out of his happy place before he drifted off too far.

“Yeah, we’re good.” “It’s a tight frequency and I keep rolling it so they can’t track it long if they do pick it up. I know they’re looking for us but they haven’t caught us yet.”

“So are we lucky or good?” Pooch wanted to know.

“Careful,” Clay said. “We’re careful.”

Jensen glanced up in time to see Aisha look back at him, the white flash of her grin like lightning in the storm cloud of her wind-whipped hair. -We’re good,- she mouthed.

“Okay, I’m tracking the Professor’s phone. I don’t have an exact location, I can only pick up on it when she passes through wifi enabled areas,” Jensen said. “Then I get a ping off of it. She’s on her way out of town. There’s no way she can get back in the next hour.”

“Anything else cooking?” Clay sounded distracted. Jensen checked his active map. They should be parked now, Cougar walking around to the trunk of the car to pull out the gun case, Clay scanning the hills for the flash of light off a scope or sight.

“More action on the phones from the financial district. Not at that location, though. If the dish motor holds out and they’re not moving, I’ll be able to pinpoint it.”

“That’s a lot of ‘if’, Jensen.” He could see Clay’s furrowed brow in his mind’s eye.

“I’d be more certain ‘if’ we weren’t, you know, wanted criminals on the run from our own government and rogue agents going after the man inside it who set us up. Any time you want to go legit, Clay, I’ll have a lot less ‘if’ for you.” Jensen was too busy working on the scant information he had on the estate security system to be genuinely pissed off. “If that’s not enough for you, I can always call Max up and ask nicely. I have his number, after all.”

“No, thanks. I think we’ll make do.”

Pooch pulled over in the shade of a small cluster of trees. Below them was a shallow drainage ditch that ran up toward the wall of the estate. Aisha slid out first and down into the ditch, shouldering her gear as she went.

“Give me thirty seconds,” she murmured in their ears as she made her way toward the wall. Jensen checked to make sure he had his gun as his phone vibrated against his chest. He pulled it out to see a message from Cougar.

-Gun.-

-Breathe,- Jensen sent back, grinning. He couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed. Instead, he felt warm through. Safe, and other things. He tucked the phone away again. Going into a mission this damn happy was probably bad news. One last check of his alerts and he was ready to climb over the front seat and out Aisha’s side.

“Meet you at the front door.” Pooch waited until the door was closed to pull away. Jensen jumped down into the thick brush lining the dry ditch and forged through.

Where the air was still, it settled on everything like a hot, wet woollen blanket. The greenery was as dense as some jungle maneuvers Jensen had been on, the bristly leaves and stalks of something aggressive lashed his skin where it was bare, raised fine red welts. He had to go down on his belly to slide under the black iron fence that wrapped around six feet from the wall. When he got to the base of the wall, he put his back to it and looked up to see Aisha’s boots high above his head.

“We good?” He couldn’t tell much from here.

“Cameras are down. Wires are rerouted.” A thin line slithered down to touch Jensen’s shoulder. “Just making sure you won’t cut your pretty self up on the glass here.”

“You’re one to talk.” Jensen pulled on gloves to grab the line and braced a foot high up the wall to give himself a good start. “I’m surprised we haven’t heard about you breaking a nail yet.”

“I break ‘em,” she said, grabbing the strap of his backpack as he caught up with her and hauling him up the last couple feet. He swung a leg over the wall and straddled it briefly, protected by the mat she’d brought with her. “But it’s all in a good cause.” She winked at him.

“Are you kids done flirting?” Clay grumbled.

Knee to knee with her, getting the line ready to go down the other side, Jensen could easily read her lips when she mouthed, “Totally worth it.”

“No sign of dogs, still? I am not a dog person. At all. Cats are nice. I’m good with cats.” He gave Aisha his hand to let her down the other side but waited to hear the answer before he let her go.

“No dogs,” Cougar said. He sounded like he was smiling.

“Go.” Jensen let Aisha down, then followed her over. “Pooch, I’ll be there in twenty seconds.”

“I’m on the back door.” Aisha pulled out the box they’d built to carry the interrupted signal from the door and wiggled it before she disappeared into the shadows under the flower-draped pergola.

Opening the gate from inside was an easy fix. The remote used to open and close it wasn’t much different than a fancy garage door opener and there were codes out there on the market if you knew where to look. Cash and some brains went a long way.

Pooch pulled in like he had any damn business being there and came around to the service entrance where Aisha had the door problem solved. They waited while Jensen finished hijacking the security feeds and taking them offline without setting off the alarms.

The house was cool inside, beautiful and calm. Walking through the door was like jumping into a pool or another world.

“I say we camp out here,” Aisha said softly. She took point with Pooch on her heels, moving silently through the huge kitchen.

Jensen hadn’t ever looked at homes the way that he did now--as though he could live there. The shift in perspective made his stomach twist. The better he got at this job, the more he had to lose. He wanted to reach out and touch Cougar somehow, to reassure himself Cougar was still there. The silence was a better indicator of his presence, though. Silence and, if Jensen pretended a little, the rhythm of his breathing.

“Found the safe,” Aisha said. “We’ll keep sweeping the house while you start.”

The office was elegant, red tile and red wood furniture, dense rugs and exotic carvings. The safe was easily visible from the door. Sheafs of papers were stacked on top.

“Clay,” Pooch said. “Did we see kids when we were doing surveillance?”

“None,” Clay said after a moment. “There’s a playhouse in the back and a swing set. It’s summer. They’re probably on vacation.”

“Fair enough.”

Jensen knelt down on a pretty good replica Kerman silk carpet and got out his gear. “Digital lock, shouldn’t take too long.” The safe was decent quality, fireproof. There wasn’t likely to be anything more valuable than blueprints and data storage in there. Anything personal would be kept elsewhere. The lock was standard. Not American but Chinese, which was going to require a few adjustments to his breaking program.

“Think Max is watching?” Aisha wanted to know.

“The security system is down and I didn’t get any other transmissions out of here, so likely not.” One of Jensen’s alerts was going off. It was probably nothing. He focused on working through Mandarin hacker-speak to put the correct algorithms into the breaker. “Why? You think we should flash him?”

“Not a chance. He doesn’t deserve all this goodness I’ve got here.”

“All this?” Jensen snickered as he dropped the files into the program and let it go. If it was an old lock code, it’d crack like an egg. “I guess there’s a zoom function on the cameras. He might get half an eyeful at twenty times.”

“Bathroom’s back two doors, cupcake,” Pooch said. “If you want some cold water for that burn.”

“Got it.” Most of Jensen's job was preparation, that was all there was to it. The safe breaker flashed as the numbers fell into place. “Let’s see what’s in there. Someone else needs to come pick this up, I’ve got alerts.” There were two now, humming persistently against his chest. “I better see if our hideout’s burning down.”

“I’ll get them,” Aisha said. Moments later, he heard her feet on the tile, then carpet.

Jensen sat down with his back to the Professor’s desk and tried to parse what was coming through. One of his intercepted images was resolving. He’d located the satellite phones of the other agents, too. Or, rather, not located them. They were well outside the city. They weren’t even on the island anymore. After puzzling about how to refine that--it’d take more time than he had now and more than he could do on a phone--he flipped back to the image.

“Got a picture here. Agents to Max, one of the old ones that finally finished rendering.” He looked up as Aisha tapped him with a rolled up document. Looked like a survey. They needed that, so he nodded at her. “Looks like some kind of shop. Maybe engine area.” The second wave of adjustments washed over the screen and Jensen could make out what was so important about the picture. “Shit. Shit. Guys. Shit. I found the kids.”

“You what?” Clay’s voice cracked in his ear like someone had fired a gun next to his head.

“The kids.” Jensen was on his feet. “Max has her kids. We can’t take the plans. He has her kids.”

 


	21. Comes Around to Your Soul (#21. Finishing Each Others' Sentences)

“This is Max,” Clay said tightly. “He’s probably on his way to get the plans now. Get out of the house. Pooch, move the van.” Next to him, Cougar started dismantling his gun.

“I’m gone,” Pooch said.

“He’s going to kill those kids.” Jensen sounded breathless. Distraught. That made Cougar’s gut churn worse than the thought of the children dying. Some day he’d have to think about what the hell was wrong with him but that day was not today. “I’ll see if I can get--“

“--pictures,” Aisha said flatly. “We get pictures of these documents. Now.”

“He’s going to kill them all,” Clay said. Cougar jumped down a crumbling stone wall ahead of him and turned to make sure Clay was down before taking off for the car. “We had no clue he had the kids?”

“None. There was nothing. She didn’t... no indication at all.” Cougar could see Jensen in his mind as clearly as if he were there, hands in his hair, face twisted. “He didn’t send a thing that could be considered proof of life. The only thing I can think is that they were--“

“--physical photos.” Aisha interrupted Jensen again. “I found them in the back of the safe. They’re dated, no idea if it’s correct.”

Cougar’s boots ground in the gravel on the shoulder of the road as he vaulted the ditch. He threw the guns in the back of the car, through the open window, and slid across the trunk on the way to the drivers’ side.

“I’m clear,” Pooch said. “Coming around the side. You two better move your asses.”

“Coming,” Jensen said.

“Stop fussing,” Aisha hissed. “Max’s people are coming to break in and then kill her, they don’t care what order the shit in the safe is in.”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Cougar said in spite of himself, at the same time that Jensen said, “I know what I’m doing,” and Clay said, “Let him do it.”

“Fucking Greek chorus up in here,” Pooch grumbled. “Just got passed by a water and power van. No idea if it’s legit. You all want to actually move?”

“We’ll meet you at the restaurant, regroup.” Clay finally caught up with Cougar at the car. “Go.”

It was a ubiquitous place to meet. Golden arches were easy to see from a distance. The mall was an easy place to get lost in if they had to split up. Cougar and Clay were already at a table, eating and feigning calm, when the others arrived.

Cougar picked his hat up off the seat beside him and pointed to it. Jensen slid in next to him obediently. Cougar put a hand on his thigh and felt him trembling with tension. That wasn’t normal for him.

“Can you narrow down either location?” Clay handed his shake to Aisha, who looped her arm around his neck and all but settled into his lap. Cougar knew they didn’t look quite like any other group of friends--they were all dressed a little too warmly for the weather, in dull khakis and greys--but they could fake it.

“I have a decent lock on the Professor’s phone.” Jensen pulled out a small tablet and slipped it to Clay. “If you use that, you’ll find her. There’s a lot of free wifi in tourist areas. That means that Max’s people have an even better lock on her, though.”

“Leave her to us.” Clay nodded at Aisha. “Go get us some clothes that make us look like something other than escapees from a survivalist commune. Take Pooch.”

Pooch was halfway through his first burger. He tucked another into his right vest pocket, a carton of fries into the other, and grabbed a milkshake. “Sure thing, boss.”

Aisha took a cheeseburger and a Coke, scowling at Clay. “I better not get stuck with the shopping all the time,” she grumbled on her way out the door.

Jensen had his head down over his laptop, face drawn. “I think they’re on a ship. The kids.”

“Makes sense.” Clay took a bite of quesadilla. “Easy to keep them offshore. You said you were having trouble tracking the satellite phones.”

“Yeah. And I never put the time into getting a lock on their personal phones. I should have.” Jensen pulled his glasses off and ran a hand over his face. “I should have and now her kids are going to die, and...”

“...you need some of that energy drink poison shit.” Cougar was done watching this, Jensen looking white as a sheet while he pounded away at the keyboard, trying to make something out of nothing. He looked over at Clay. “Walgreens across the parking lot.”

Clay hesitated, looking between them, then he acquiesced. “I’ll be right back.”

When he was gone, Cougar slid an arm around Jensen’s shoulders, and to hell with what anyone thought of it. He could feel Jensen’s heart racing through his back. “Turn off your comms,” he said quietly, palming his own earbud.

Jensen did the same, but then dropped it on the table and went back to typing. The air in the restaurant was icy. The air smelled of disinfectant and fake strawberries. Cougar was cold from the inside out.

“Jensen.”

“I have to do this. I’m going through the data from their cell phones. I can’t track them, I never installed the ping program on them, I can’t get a lock on the satellite phones. But I did snag some data from inside the offices. I might be able to cross-reference some of their GPS signals to locate the boat--if not where it is now, where it was in the past.”

“Jensen.” Cougar put his free hand over both of Jensen’s. “Stop.”

“I can’t. Those kids. Look at them.” They were young, maybe five and seven. Cougar wasn’t great at estimating ages. Frightened. Mouths duct taped. The boy had a mop of black curls, the girl’s hair was sleek and straight to her waist except for the tangles, probably from being transported in the trunk of a car. “I can handle anything, but not...” He gestured at the screen.

“Not kids. I know.”

“Everything’s so fucking cheap. Life’s fucking cheap.”

“It’s not.”

“How do you do it, then?” Jensen turned enough to look at Cougar at out of the corner of his eye.

“For now.” Cougar felt ill articulating it at all but saying it to Jensen was worse. “They’re not children. They’re a problem to solve.” He nudged Jensen’s hands aside and tapped the touchpad, closing the picture with the children. “Narrow your field of vision. You need to do one thing at a time. Locate your target.”

“Just like that. That’s how you do it.” Jensen’s voice was dull. “Targets, not people.”

“For now. To get through.” Cougar moved his hand so Jensen could get back at the keyboard. “When it’s done, forget I said it.”

“In Bolivia.” Jensen sat back, hands limp in his lap. “Would you have made a different call? Walked away?”

“No.” That was an easy answer and not just because walking away would have gotten them killed anyway. “We had a choice, then. Choice is luxury.”  
  
“You don’t get many of them, do you?” Jensen looked down at his hands, then straightened and started typing again.

“Sometimes, no.” Cougar kept a hand on Jensen’s back, between his shoulder blades, feeling him breathe. “Sometimes, yes.”

When Clay and Aisha were gone, the three of them remaining piled into the van to head for the port. Jensen was sprawled in the back of the van, leaning against the seat, staring at the computer screen. Cougar couldn’t do anything but watch him struggle to focus, swinging between productivity and panic.

Cougar sat behind him, settling in awkwardly so that Jensen’s shoulders were braced between his knees. The van was a sauna, sweat turned the back of Jensen’s neck glossy and darkened his hair. Not for the first time, Cougar wished he’d paid more attention to what Jensen actually did so he could help. Aisha was younger, more adept with technology, better suited.

Pooch pulled into the gas station across from the mall and got out to fill the tank, giving them a moment alone.

“It’ll be okay.” It was a completely useless thing to say, and a damned lie. This was why Cougar didn’t bother talking much. It didn’t fix anything. He put his hands on Jensen’s shoulders, uncertain of whether or not he was making things worse.

“Keep telling me that.” Jensen tipped his head to rub his cheek against Cougar’s hand.

“I will.” If it helped, he’d do about anything.

Jensen pushed up his glasses and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I shouldn’t need a babysitter. You should have gone with Clay. Max is going to use a sniper to take out the Professor. There’s no way Aisha’s going to get near her.”

“Clay knows anti-sniper tactics. I’m not babysitting.” Cougar leaned forward, sliding his arm around Jensen’s neck and pulling him in close. “I’m your spotter.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I used to have someone who looked after me. Had my back. He was good at it. I’ll get better at it, helping you.”

“You want to? I’m used to being the one doing the helping.” Jensen leaned into him.

“Sometimes you have to trust someone to think about everything you can’t hold onto,” Cougar said. “You think I pick my targets? Decide when and where? Moralize? Trust me. I’ll tell you when to worry. Until then, do your job.”

“I trust you.” Jensen pulled up another program and started typing in a string of numbers and letters that Cougar couldn’t have remembered if he’d tried. Most people had enough trouble memorizing phone numbers. “We’re about to be screwed anyway, so I’m going to go ahead and do a very bad thing that’s going to let Max know we’re on this track. Hopefully his people won’t notice the intrusion until we’ve had time to get there.”

“What are you doing?” Cougar didn’t have a damn clue what the program did but he recognized the little slingshot icon.

“Getting into Max’s system, via the satellite, so I can ping those phones. Cheating. They’ll notice if they’re looking for it.” Jensen paused. “If I’m wrong about any of it, it’ll probably kill those kids.”

“Do it.” Cougar straightened up but left one hand resting at the nape of Jensen’s neck just to keep touching.

“Done, then.” Jensen tapped a few more keys, another window opened up and amber numbers scrolled madly across the screen. “If someone told you to... if your target was a kid. Would you? If all you had was that person’s word.”

“If I trusted the person doing the telling enough. Yes.” Cougar didn’t have much choice but honesty.

“You trust anyone that much?” Jensen looked over his shoulder, eyes wide. “Who? The government? Clay?”

“Not anymore.” Cougar ran his thumb along Jensen’s jaw. “You. I’d trust you.”


	22. Another Kind of Warfare (#4. Competition)

“Tell me we have a boat.” Jensen had a lock on the satellite phones, but he was in a bit of trouble trying to cover his tracks. “I have a confirmed location off-shore.”

“Of course we have a boat.” Pooch took a turn a little tighter than necessary, rocking Jensen against Cougar’s bad leg. “We’re on a damn island, Jensen, and you think I didn’t line up a boat in case we needed one?”

“They’re going to see us coming.”

“If they’re looking.” Cougar’s hand on the back of his neck was reassuring.

“I can’t keep this up and help you guys. I’m just going to burn everything when I’m done.” Years of work setting up cover identities, burrowing into online communities, he’d lose it all if he asked for help. He couldn’t be connected to this job.

“Burn everything? Whoa, no one’s burning anything,” Pooch protested.

“I mean my connections.” Jensen pointed in the direction of where he thought he’d left his backpack. “There’s a burner phone in there, the front pocket. I need to call someone.”

“Huh,” Pooch said. “Who knew you had connections?”

“Phone.” Cougar pressed it into his hand. “I need to get us set.” He moved out from behind Jensen to rummage through a wooden box crudely bolted to the wall of the van.

“The photograph makes it look like it’s dark where the kids are. It’s some kind of abandoned oil rig that’s supposed to be renovated for a fish farm. I sent the coordinates to you guys.” Jensen checked an ancient, secret BBS for a number, then dialled.

“Beetle.” Jensen had known Beetle, or whoever held the pseudonym, for years. He’d never heard the voice before now and wouldn’t again. He hit enter on the post he was sending to the BBS.

“This is Garvey. I just left a post on the board, I’m calling to confirm. I need DDoS for the following addresses.” He rattled off the list. “And I’m getting pushback on a satellite hack I need covered for the next sixty minutes.”

“The game is on. That’s a hell of a target. You in for points?”

“Sorry, I’m gone. Give my point stack to the winner.”

“Live long and prosper.” The line went dead, then Jensen crushed the phone against the van floor with the butt of his gun.

“I liked that game,” he grumbled as he shut down the connection to the BBS. “I was top ten there, too.”

“What did you just do?” Pooch looked over his shoulder.

“Dropped the wrath of the internet on Max’s sites, servers, phones, you name it.” Jensen tried to get up but his body had locked in place and everything hurt. “And someone’s going to make sure my ping program is covered until we have a chance to get to the kids. It’s a group effort. Kind of a game.”

“You’re a _hacker_.” Pooch sounded oddly incredulous. “Like for real.”

“A competitive one, even. I don’t play by the rules all the time, you guys just never notice. How do you think I got this job?” Jensen held out his hands and Cougar hauled him up.

“I dunno.” Pooch looked at him in the rear view mirror. “I thought it was because you were so damn cute.”

“He has a point,” Cougar murmured.

“Oh, fuck both of you.” Jensen winced at the pain in his legs.

“Are you _trying_  to get me killed?” Pooch turned off-road and they bumped down a narrow track.

“Cougar wouldn’t shoot you over something like that.” Jensen let himself drop into the back seat instead of fighting his legs, Cougar grabbed a cargo anchor on the wall for balance.

“Just in the leg,” Cougar said reassuringly. He grabbed a vest from the box and threw it to Jensen. “Or somewhere in the vicinity. Put that on.” It was time to go to work.

The boat Pooch had lined up for them had seen better days, just like everything else they had to work with lately. Jensen scrambled down to the shoreline under the weight of his vest, his gear, and his weapon. It had been a long time since he’d carried a rifle like this. Pooch had done good work to get his hands on a few M4 carbine rifles.

The longer they were on the run like this, the more Jensen realized how good they were. They’d been good, they’d been the best. But he hadn’t fully understood how damn good that really was. He grabbed Cougar’s hand for balance as he jumped down the last drop to the shore.

They loaded what they had into the inflatable motorboat lashed to a deadfall, then pushed off until they were waist-deep in the ocean. The water was cool, the air was clear and sweet. It was a stunning day. Jensen tumbled into the boat next to Cougar as Pooch started the engine. The rig was a black box on the horizon.

“Paint up.” Cougar sat up and turned to face Jensen. When Jensen gave him an incredulous look, he just took off Jensen’s glasses and pulled out a tin of paint. “Glare. Cameras. And I forgot to pack sunscreen.” He opened the tin and wiped streaks of black over Jensen’s cheekbones. “Your sunglasses are in your vest.”

“Thanks.” Jensen traded the sunglasses for his usual pair before he picked up the bag with the infrared goggles in it and started checking them out. They were only marginally prepared for this. His phone buzzed against his chest. “That’s Clay.”

He pulled it out and hit the speaker. “Clay, you’re on speaker.”

“We have the professor, she’s fine. We’re going to keep moving. The professor wants to return home but I’ve convinced her not to go until her children are safe. Status there?”

“On our way. We have a location, sent it to you just now. We’ll call when we have the kids.” When. Not if. “We need to dismantle the safe house.”

“We’ll get to it. You get those kids.”

Jensen didn’t have a clue what happened but the next thing he knew he was face down in the boat with Cougar’s elbow in his back. “Gotta go, Clay,” he hissed, then hit the button to kill the call.

“Glint off the rig platform,” Pooch said, tugging his hat down to shade his sunglasses. “Someone’s moving.” And the phone was reflective. Jensen really needed to treat their civilian gear.

“I got him,” Cougar said quietly. “He’s not looking our way.”

“Waiting on Max?” Jensen wriggled out from under Cougar and rolled over on his back so he could slide toward Pooch. He settled there between Cougar’s feet, back to Pooch’s knees, his own feet on either side of Cougar’s hips.

“Could be,” Cougar said. “Won’t be waiting for anything much longer.” He unslung his gun and slid forward to brace his elbows on the rounded, inflatable seat at the front of the boat. “Flash was a lighter. Man kidnaps two kids but doesn’t smoke inside.”

“You’re not gonna make that shot,” Pooch murmured. “You are gonna get us killed.”

“Just keep us at the same angle to the waves, steady speed.”

Jensen picked up a set of goggles to watch as well, setting them to the long-range finder. It took him a moment to find the man but there he was. “You want numbers?” He’d done this a couple times before but it always felt like make-work, until now.

“Please,” Cougar murmured. “Count ‘em off.” Jensen adjusted for Cougar’s height and started reading the distance numbers.

“Two-fifty-nine yards. Five. Forty. Five.” The boat rose and fell in a rhythm like a heartbeat as they crossed the wind-ruffled sea. “Vertical change is holding at eighteen inches, I’ll call distance at the peaks now. Thirty-five. Twenty-nine.”

Cougar pulled the trigger at two-hundred and eighteen yards and Jensen saw the man’s head disintegrate.

“Hang tight.” Pooch opened up the small motor and they roared toward the platform. “I cannot believe you made that damn shot. Holy shit.”

“Keep watching for any other movement,” Cougar ordered. Jensen kept scanning while he listened to Cougar get the rest of their gear set, then Cougar’s mouth brushed his ear as he tucked a couple flashbang grenades in Jensen’s vest. “Good call,” he said softly.

“Any time.” Jensen set a hand against Cougar’s chest for a moment. “Just wish I’d been filming.”

“No shit.” Pooch cut the engines as the shadow of the rig fell over them. “I’d like to have proof of that one.”

“Let me see if I got anything on this platform.” Jensen grabbed his computer and checked what his searches had spit out. Now he had to go back to the picture of the kids but he remembered what Cougar had said: problem to solve, targets not kids. The pipes behind them were pressurized, according to the symbol on them. “They’re in a pump room. The rig had four of them, one for each quarter.”

“Let’s assume a guy who smokes is lazy as fuck,” Pooch said as he spun a silencer onto his gun. Cougar leaned over Jensen to do the same to his. “What’s the one nearest where Cougar killed him?”

“Up this leg, over the rail at the corner, left ten feet, door that’s probably locked, then down the maintenance hatch.”

“Guy came from the right,” Cougar said, leaning out to help Pooch lash them to the rig.

“Yeah, that’s personnel area. Nicer, lighting, water, all that. He probably wasn’t with the kids. There’s a hall that will take you to the pump room from there.” Jensen showed them on the schematics his search programs had dug out of some mouldy corner of the internet. “We’ll have to split up if we want to cover both sides.”

“Pooch and I will go down the way he came up,” Cougar said. “We’ll go first, draw them out.”

That idea made Jensen a little twitchy, but he nodded. There was explosive foam in one of the bags, he pocketed a can and grabbed one of Aisha’s pre-wired detonators. “Let’s go.”

At the corner of the rig, they parted ways. Cougar didn’t say anything, just touched Jensen’s wrist as he took point. He was still limping slightly, which bothered Jensen more than it should have, given that he needed to focus.

“Wait until you hear them firing back,” Pooch said, low, and Jensen heard him over the earbud more than not.

He nodded, then headed off on his own to find the door. Sure enough, it was locked. He cranked the dial on the bottom of the can until he heard the partition pop, then sprayed foam up and around the door. He pulled out the little detonator and wired the foam, waiting with his back to the wall until he heard the first shots. He hadn’t breathed more than twice before they came.

All his focus was on the task at hand. The door went inward with a resounding crash and a black cloud billowed out over everything. The beam from the flashlight undermounted on Jensen’s rifle led the way through the smoke and down a short hall, then he dropped through a maintenance hatch. After a quick sweep, the white disk of light found the pump room door. The sounds of gunfire still reached him from the level above.

It was only after he’d kicked in the door and the white circle framed the frightened face of a little girl that he remembered fully why he was here.

“Guys, I’ve got the kids. It’s okay,” he said to the children in English, then switched to his lousy Spanish. “Your mama sent us.” He closed the door and wedged a chair under the handle to buy himself a few seconds if anyone tried to come through. “She’s with my friends.”

 


	23. The Ruiner (#12. Chores)

“We’ll meet you in the parking lot by the beach,” Clay said. “I can’t convince the Professor here to come with us.”

“The kids need a hospital.” Jensen had the little boy sleeping on his lap in the back seat of the van while he helped the girl comb her hair. “Hopefully that’ll keep her clear of her house until the cops get all over it enough to keep Max away.”

“You should have our location now. Clay out.”

Cougar was sitting on the floor of the van, back to their box of gear, watching Jensen work and translating for him as necessary. Both kids had been glued to him from the time he’d found them, and it seemed mutual, in spite of the fact that they both stank to hell and back until they’d been cleaned up. Jensen hadn’t noticed that Cougar could tell. He’d just kept them in his lap anyway for the ride back to shore while he worked on getting the duct tape off of them.

Childcare chores were not Cougar’s job, he’d stayed well out of it. Jensen and Pooch had bathed them in the ocean very quickly and dressed both of them in spare shirts from a go bag someone had stashed under the back seat--their own clothes had been crusted with filth, not just unpleasant but unsanitary.

“I don’t want the hospital,” the girl said, climbing back up beside Jensen and burrowing under his arm. Juliana, that was her name. Cougar put that into his head because he didn’t want that look he’d get from Jensen if he forgot. Again. “Berto doesn’t want the hospital.”

“Just for a little bit. Then you can go home,” Jensen assured her. “Is my face clean?” He turned his head for her to inspect him. He’d washed off the camouflage paint when the kids had been bathed. Juliana checked him out carefully, taking his face in her little hands with a frown.

“You need to shave,” she declared. “But you’re clean.”

“Thank you. Here.” Jensen gave her another little piece of a meal bar and offered her some water. “Keep eating. Little bites.” Cougar wasn’t sure how Jensen did it. He had some kind of magic with kids. Maybe it was being so close to one himself.

“How long?” Cougar asked Pooch, sliding up to sit in the passenger seat.

“Twenty minutes,” Pooch said after a quick check of the GPS. “He’s pretty good at that,” he said after a while, taking a peek in the rear view mirror.

“Mmhm.” Cougar resisted looking again himself because he wasn’t completely sure of the way he felt about it all when he did. Or he did and he wasn’t ready to look it in the face.

“Something wrong?”

Cougar slouched down in his seat and tipped his hat down. His vest cut him uncomfortably in the back of the neck but he ignored it. “No. Why?”

“Because you’re not as sneaky as you think you are.” Pooch snorted, then punched him in the arm. “Don’t go being an asshole, okay?”

“Why would I?” Cougar was about to do just that if he didn’t get an explanation.

“I don’t know. Maybe because your boyfriend’s being all adorable with a couple little kids, which are pretty much his favourite thing ever, and when this is all over you’ll actually have time to think about how deep you’ve been digging the hole you’re standing in right now and whether or not you want to get out of it,” Pooch said in an infuriatingly rational tone. “Because I don’t think you do but I’m also thinking that you’re going to do something dumbassed to fuck this up because I damn well know you.”

“I’m fine.”

“Uhuh. We just never see any of your girlfriends more than once or twice because... what? Airline stewardesses? Secret agents? Shapeshifters?”

“Not discussing this. It’s not the same.” Pooch was poking at exactly what Cougar was trying to ignore. “And he’s not...” He waved a hand vaguely.

“Really? You’re going to get picky about words with me right now? Boy. Friend.” Pooch turned the van onto the highway. “I have another one for you.”

“Do not.” Cougar was really starting to regret being friends with Pooch right now.

“I’m going to. I gotta say it, man. You can punch me again if you want. Someone’s gotta say it and if I say it then it just makes it easier on everyone. I am doing you a favour, Coug. ”

“Don’t.”

“Do you know that I owe Jolene fifty bucks because of you? Fifty. And I have to admit she was right?” Pooch gave Cougar some serious side eye. “If I approved any less I would be really pissed off at you.”

“I’ll give you the fifty.” Cougar felt around in the glove box for a pair of headphones. Maybe he could block Pooch out.

“You.”

“Don’t do this.” Headphones, but tangled so badly that Cougar couldn’t get them undone.

“Are.”

“Swear to God, I will shoot you.”

“In.”

Cougar put his hands over his ears so he didn’t hear the rest of it.

“What the heck are you two doing?” Jensen wanted to know.

“Nothing,” Cougar said at the same time as Pooch. He put his hands back down and glared bullets at Pooch, who just shrugged them off.

“Here’s the turn off to the beach. Almost there,” Pooch said, in Spanish. “Soon, kids.”

Cougar exhaled slowly and dug around behind the seat for a bottle of water. They sweated so much in their gear, they got dehydrated fast. He had a mouth full of water when Pooch leaned over.

“Love,” he hissed in Cougar’s ear. Cougar choked on his water. “Gotcha, sucker.” Pooch’s gleeful cackle was demonic.

“I always had a thing for widows,” Cougar sputtered as he mopped his face with his T-shirt. It was too damp to do much good.

“I will have died in a good cause. Please note your total lack of telling me I’m wrong.” Pooch drummed on the steering wheel and did a little victory dance in his seat. “The Pooch knows. ”

“I’m plotting your untimely demise.” Cougar took off his hat and smacked Pooch across the leg with it several times.

“Please let this not be about American football and European football,” Jensen said from the back.

“There’s only one football,” Pooch and Cougar said in unison. Cougar smacked him again.

“Someone shoot me,” Jensen groaned. “I can’t go through this again. I had to go to therapy last time.”

Pooch followed the GPS signal to where Aisha was waiting, perched on the hood of the car. She looked a little grey and tired, but she was smiling. “Saw you coming, guys,” she said, waving.

“Where’s Clay?” Cougar stopped halfway out of the van, standing on the running board, to look across the crowded parking lot. The place was as bright and busy as a fairground, raised voices and floating balloons and children shouting.

“Walking the Professor to her car.” Aisha grinned as Jensen came around the side of the van with both sleepy kids in his arms. “She wants to get the kids to the hospital, and I think she just wants to get away from us. You got some friends there, J.”

“For now.” Jensen looked pretty pleased with himself. Happy. When Pooch joined him, he handed off the little boy.

“C’mere, little man,” Pooch said, setting the boy on his hip.

“You gonna miss them when they’re gone, daddy?” Aisha teased. “I don’t think you get to keep them.”

“Nah. Just glad they’re gonna be back with--“

The first blast blew out windows, set alarms screaming, and lifted the flaming wreck of a car ten feet into the air. The second shot a pillar of smoke and fire skyward.

Aisha was on the ground with Jensen, covering Juliana with her body. Pooch was behind Cougar and half-under the van with Berto. Both children were wailing.

“Clay!” Aisha struggled to her feet, her hands and knees bleeding. “Oh, my God, Clay!”

Cougar caught her around the waist and spun her back toward the van. “You’re not armed,” he barked at her. His ears were ringing from the explosion and the cacophony that rose around them. “Stay. Help Jensen.”

He took off at a run, gun in hand by his side, going up and over cars, straight toward the fire. It was easier than fighting his way against the fleeing civilians streaming out of the parking lot. He couldn’t see what was left of the target car from here. The blast radius was excessive, other cars were burning, the stench of melted rubber and asphalt was heavy on the air.

The wind shifted, pulling the black veil of smoke with it, and Cougar caught sight of Clay. Like Cougar, he was standing on the hood of a car. His obnoxious parrot-printed shirt was shredded, blood ran down his face, dripped from his gun hand, his khakis were stained with it.

“Get down,” he shouted, waving at Cougar. Cougar dropped and covered between cars, Clay met him halfway.

“The Professor?” Cougar already knew but he waited for Clay’s nod anyway. He coughed and spat smokey saliva and blood. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d--what? Bitten his tongue? Lip? He couldn’t tell.

“I was watching the hotel,” Clay gestured to the wall of windows to the west. “Good shot from there. No scope flash.” He shook his head. “That was a remote trigger. That wasn’t pressure or key, nothing. That was deliberate. She could have been driving around with that thing for weeks.” He covered his face with his hands.

“Clay.” Cougar knew how much Clay hated losing someone but they had to keep going. “The kids.”

“Are they...” Clay pulled his hands away to stare at Cougar, his face bleached under the soot and stubble.

“They’re fine. But we have to do something with them and then get out of here.”

“We can’t go after Max with two kids. We’ll work something out.” A problem to solve would keep Clay from dwelling on the fact that he’d lost an asset and nearly been killed himself.

“How bad are you hurt?” Cougar shifted over to sit next to him.

“Just glass, I think. Everything works.” Clay tried to get up and left blood smears down the car as he struggled to his feet. “That blast took out at least ten people. Goddamn it.”

“It’s on Max.”

They joined the others in the van while fire trucks, ambulance, police cars fought their way into the parking lot. Aisha was setting out the first aid kit, Pooch was tuning everything they had--radio, computer, phones--to news stations to find out how best to get out of this mess, while Jensen was trying to calm the children in the back. Cougar helped Clay in and he slumped down with his back to the drivers’ seat.

Jensen was grey-faced but in one piece. In one piece physically. He rocked the kids, murmuring to them in Spanish. He was getting better at it. His accent wasn’t as bad as it used to be. It felt strange and warm to hear him speaking familiar words so soothingly, telling lies that Cougar didn’t have to fully hear to know.

“It’s all right. Everything’s going to be fine. You’re safe.”

“Give me the kids,” Aisha said abruptly. She left Clay to Pooch and grabbed her purse.

“Why?” All four of them turned to look at her.

“I have a false identity for Puerto Rico, you don’t, any of you.” She slung her purse across her body. “I’m dressed like a civilian. I’m a woman. I speak Spanish, my local accent is good enough. They’ll trust me. I’ll tell the cops I saw the woman leave the kids by the trees here before she ran to get her car. I’ll take the car. You guys leave ahead of me.”

“Good enough,” Clay said wearily. “Go get it done.”

Cougar watched Jensen’s expression shift to hardness, then he nodded. “Let’s do it.” Juliana sobbed and tried to cling to him when he handed her to Aisha. “I’ll come see you, sweetheart. The police will keep you safe.”

As soon as the van door closed behind Jensen, Pooch started it and edged it out across the treed median and into traffic. Clay sprawled in the passenger seat, wiping down his wounds. Jensen threw himself into the seat in the back of the van near Cougar and stared ahead blindly. Cougar reached out and put an arm around his rigid shoulders.

“I’m going to kill Max,” he told Jensen quietly. He didn’t mean it as a figure of speech. It might mean leaving the team for a while, it might mean a lot of things, but he was going to look down his sights one day, breathe, and pull the trigger.

“Thanks.” Jensen relaxed against him slowly. “If you need a spotter...”

“You’re my man,” Cougar said, drawing him in. “I know.”


	24. Killing Time in Eden (#26. I Need You)

Jensen had no idea how he knew there was an old research station buried in the depths of El Yunque National Forest, much less where it was, but he’d pulled that bit of knowledge out of his ass and here they were. He’d accessed maps of service roads and some environmentalist guerilla reports regarding the movements of the local rangers. He’d probably considered it weeks ago when they were making their first plans to move on Max.

Night had come long since, the air was hot and still, the darkness smelled green. This was close to paradise and all Jensen wanted to do was get out of here. He leaned on the mossy deck rail and stared out past the screens into the dense forest. Somewhere out there, Pooch was waiting for Aisha, to lead her back to the team. Inside the station, Clay slept on a sagging couch from the seventies, bandaged heavily and still half-deaf from the blast.

Tomorrow, they’d try and buy or charter a plane to take them to the site of Max’s new radio telescope. It wasn’t even on the map that they could see, the coordinates showed nothing but water, but Max’s specifications told a different story. The lack of evidence on the satellite maps wasn’t to throw anyone off, it had to be part of a larger plan. The calculations for something like that couldn’t be falsified, they’d destroy any chance of the telescope working.

He heard Cougar’s footfalls inside before the door opened and the sound came nearer. Cougar didn’t say anything, he just slid an arm around Jensen’s waist, let his chin rest on Jensen’s shoulder. They stood there in silence for a long time, until Jensen leaned into Cougar and moved a hand to touch his, to twine their fingers together.

“Can’t win for losing some days.” His own voice sounded false in his ears, too heavy and too tired to be his.

Cougar made a soft, noncommittal noise, then kissed under Jensen’s ear. “Come to bed.”

“I can’t sleep.” Jensen wanted to stay awake until he woke up for real, as though going to sleep would be signing the form that said he accepted the latest turn of events. If he stayed awake long enough, it wouldn’t become the past, immutable. “I can’t leave it like this. I told them it’d be okay. They don’t have anyone. And I just let them go.”

Cougar tugged his hand gently, turning him so that his back was to the rail and he could feel the night compressed between them, they were so close. “Everything you did today, and the foster care system of Puerto Rico is too much for you to take on?” It was so dark that all Jensen could see was the glint of his eyes in the shadows of his hair but he could hear the little smile in Cougar’s voice.

“I don’t... we don’t...” Don’t interfere. Their orders were always to leave it all behind.

“Just do the right thing.” Cougar took slid a hand up under Jensen’s tank top, his thumb tracing along the midline of Jensen’s belly. “The way you do.”

“Are you trying to seduce me?”

Cougar kissed him slowly, soft lips and tongue and the slightest hint of teeth that made Jensen shiver. “Is it working?”

“Yeah.” Jensen was already breathless, his hands on Cougar’s slim hips where they were bared because his T-shirt didn’t meet his low-slung jeans.

“I want to make it better for you.” Cougar kissed him again, more aggressively this time. Possessively.

“You said that before.” Jensen remembered pieces of that night clearly through the haze: Cougar’s hands locked around his wrists, Cougar’s weight pinning him to the couch. “When I was drunk.”

“It’s still true.” Cougar followed the lines of Jensen’s chest with his fingertips, feathery touches that sent sparks straight to Jensen’s dick. “Come to bed,” he said again, and this time there was steel under the warm honey of his voice.

There wasn’t much at the station in terms of living space, just a bunk room and a main room. It was pitch black inside. They couldn’t risk a light of any kind. No mattresses remained, they’d tossed armfuls of hastily-bought sleeping bags on the bare slats of two bunks and resolved to sleep in shifts.

“Clothes off.” Jensen was half-naked, pants undone and pulling off his boots before he thought to question the quiet order. He didn’t do more than inhale before Cougar said, flatly, “Off.” He stripped the rest of the way, tucking his glasses away at the end of the bunk, and reached for Cougar in the dark.

The door lock turned, then Jensen’s hand slid over warm skin. Cougar was bare to the waist. Someone had to stay dressed. Half-dressed. So that Max’s people didn’t catch them all bare-assed and barefoot. Cougar kissed him hard and then the bunks hit him in the backs of the calves and the shoulders as he backed up. He caught Cougar by the wrist and pulled him down until they were lying the way they had that night--Cougar over him, kneeling between his knees, pinning his hands above his head.

“Please.” Jensen didn’t have any idea what, exactly, he wanted. Only that he wasn’t sure he could keep going without it. The room was so silent that he could hear the forest breathing beyond the open windows and the rush of blood in his head. Cougar’s hair falling around him smelled like the leaf-green stream where they’d washed off blood and soot and sweat.

Cougar kissed his mouth, then his throat, with teeth. Every kiss burned deeper than the surface of Jensen’s skin, all the way through him until he couldn’t ignore that the marks of them were likely to show. He was on the verge of protesting when Cougar kissed him on the mouth again so long he couldn’t breathe for it.

“I think here,” Cougar said, finding Jensen’s right wrist and curling his long fingers around it.

“What?” Jensen couldn’t think straight.

“My name.” Cougar kissed him again, harder this time, and Jensen tasted iron from the cut on Cougar’s lip. “I’ll write it out where I want it.”

“Yeah, okay.” Jensen kissed him back fiercely. He hooked his heel around the back of Cougar’s thigh and pulled Cougar against him. “As soon as I can.” The idea of having Cougar’s name printed on his skin made him desperately hard.

Cougar let go of his hands to kiss down Jensen’s chest. His teeth were sharp and his tongue soft on Jensen’s nipples, his mouth hotter than the hot night air. By the time he was working his way down from Jensen’s navel, Jensen had both hands buried in his hair and was whimpering shamelessly. Even if Clay could have heard him, he didn’t think he could have stopped. His skin was on fire, all he wanted was for Cougar to touch him or to let him get off.

When Cougar went down on him, hot mouth taking him in nearly all the way, Jensen arched and pulled one hand out of Cougar’s hair to bite his own palm. His hips came up and Cougar pushed them back down. Cougar gave head like he fucked, fiercer, even. Possessive and greedy and demanding.

Jensen’s hand twisted reflexively in Cougar’s hair when it got to be too much but Cougar kept going. He planted one hand squarely in the centre of Jensen’s chest and leaned into him so that Jensen had to inhale against his weight. It was overwhelming but when Cougar pulled off, Jensen sucked in enough air to hiss, “Don’t stop.”

Cougar’s soft laughter hit Jensen in the heart, made his throat tight with how much he loved to hear it. The slick fingers of Cougar’s free hand left a cool line of lube down behind Jensen’s balls and he took the way Jensen pulled up his knees as permission. Jensen let go of his hair to knot his hands in the slippery nylon rucked up under his head.

“Christ.” Jensen whined between his clenched teeth as Cougar’s pushed two fingers into him at the same time as he went back down on Jensen’s cock. His skin was too tight, too sensitive, crackling with pleasure. It felt as though if he opened his eyes he’d see sparks racing along the tracks of his nerves. “Fuck me.”

Still pinned by Cougar’s hand on his chest, he writhed and whimpered, half-protesting as Cougar drove him back to the edge of coming. He was so fucking conflicted, desperate to come but wanting Cougar’s cock inside him when he did. Cougar got what he wanted, opening him up and driving him over the edge so that he arched between Cougar’s hands and came so hard he saw stars in the dark behind his closed eyes.

Jensen wasn’t nearly down from the peak of it when Cougar flipped him over like he was nothing, one hand on his wrist and the other on his hip. He made his body work to get his knees under him, aware that he was begging softly as he moved. _Yeah, fuck me, please. God, I want it, please._  He hadn’t done this in so long and he didn’t remember ever wanting it like this.

Cougar pulled Jensen back and pushed in at once, both hands on his hips. Jensen’s breath turned the nylon under his cheek damp as he panted through Cougar’s cock filling him until he felt as though he was going to split open. Cougar let him adjust--barely--before moving.

Being fucked breathed life into the last sparks of his orgasm and all uncertainty melted away as sweat rose fresh on his skin and made their bodies slick where they touched. His body remembered what to do, his hips rolled, he rocked into each thrust with a whimper until he was rewarded. Cougar’s fingers dug deep into his flesh, Cougar’s hips met his ass with one blow after another until the rhythm dissolved into chaos and Cougar was coming with a low groan that made Jensen shudder with how good it sounded.

Cougar kissed his shoulders, the nape of his neck. Cool, damp hair spilled onto his back as Cougar dropped his head to rest between Jensen’s shoulder blades. His unsteady exhalations swept down Jensen’s spine with waves of warm air.

“I need you,” Jensen breathed, reaching back to touch the sleek column of Cougar’s thigh, the smooth curve of his hip. Cougar made a soft, pained noise as though his breath caught on something sharp in his chest. “Even if we quit today.”

He knew that to his core. Broke, adrift, five in the morning, roaches, heat, none of it had diminished how right it had been to be there with Cougar. It worked. They worked. Cougar slid away but it was only to return a heartbeat later, twining his body with Jensen’s, pressing kisses to his skin while Jensen tried to sort out their limbs.

“Yes,” Cougar said softly, subsiding to lie tucked up against Jensen’s chest. “That.” He lay still for at least a whole minute, just breathing, and Jensen soaked it up until he moved to clean up and wriggle back into his pants. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”

“And I’ll lie here in bed, completely debauched, hoping Max doesn’t show up?” Jensen felt too good to move just yet.

“That’s the plan.” There was the familiar sound of Cougar slinging an M4 on, then a white spotlight splashed over Jensen’s legs and crept up his body. “It’s a good plan.”

“Fuck you.” Jensen couldn’t find anything handy to throw at him. The light went out and he was left with spots dancing through the dark in front of his face so he didn’t have any idea Cougar was there until he was kissed on the mouth.

“Next time.”


	25. Come Down (#1. Inside Jokes)

Once they were all together again, Pooch and Jensen decided on their course of action. Cougar couldn’t follow half of it--from Jensen highjacking funds out of some off-shore account to Pooch picking out which plane to buy based on fuel tank capacity and landing gear. Apparently the Skywagon wasn’t going to get them there and back, they needed an Albatross. Cougar wasn’t sure he liked the sound of either.

Clay was still looking like he had his bell rung and Cougar was worried about him. Concussion from a bomb blast was a rough ride and it could take time for the full impact to be realized. They didn’t have time for Clay to recover, Max was due to survey the telescope site and take possession of his plans in person.

Cougar didn’t have to do a damn thing about it, though. Aisha was all over it. That was oddly gratifying, to see her genuinely worried and attentive. He’d wondered about that for months but there she was.

“Okay, you and Pooch need to go with Clay get the cash and then get our plane.” Jensen came over and put one of his tablets in Cougar’s lap. “Aisha and I are breaking down the gear at the apartment building and stashing it.”

“Where the hell did we find a seaplane on short notice?” Cougar set aside the gun he was working on and took a look at the map Jensen had for him.

“Flying boat, not sea plane. It’s a big sucker. Pooch had a line on it already, in case we needed to get back to the mainland on short notice. It came off the line back when Lee Majors was cool, but it’ll hold together.” Jensen zoomed in to let Cougar take in the lay of the land around the shabby little marina on the other side of the island. “It’s here. You’re picking the cash up... here.” He swiped the screen. That wasn’t a bank, that was a private estate, far bigger than the Professor’s. “I’m more worried about this, but hopefully Clay’s friends here are better than the ones in the Middle East.”

“Got it. Can I keep this?” He started committing the area to memory while he picked out the best high ground.

“What’s mine is yours.” Jensen leaned into him and Cougar turned to kiss him on the mouth.

“Damn right it is,” he murmured. Jensen rolled his eyes a little, just a little, but the flush creeping over his cheeks and throat said everything Cougar needed to know. “You’re pretty when you’re being shy,” he teased, not trying to keep the predatory heat out of his voice. Jensen’s cheek radiated warmth against his fingertips.

“So, that’s how you get the ladies, is it?” Jensen laughed and looked away, out the window over Cougar’s shoulder.

“I’m not trying when that happens.” Vain, but true.

“And you’re trying now?” Jensen’s blue gaze, when it returned to Cougar’s face, was challenging.

“I work for what I want.” Cougar drew him in with a hand at the back of his neck, kissed him with everything he wasn’t saying. “Don’t get killed while I’m gone.”

“Promise. You, too.” Jensen wound his fingers in Cougar’s ponytail, then let it slide away as he rose. “See you tomorrow.”

And that was it for paradise. Jensen and Aisha piled into the van, Cougar took shotgun next to Pooch with Clay in the backseat of the car. Where the park met the rest of the world, they parted ways.

The car took off into the high noon of a day with its heatwave teeth sunk into the island. The windows were down, something Pooch picked was boiling out of the speakers, the sun through the windshield baked Cougar’s leather vest to his chest, sweat swam under the straps of his shoulder holster, soaked his shirt from the waistband up and the armpits down. He lit a cigarette for himself and one for Clay, watched the wilting green countryside race by. Even the dust-flavoured wind snapping his hair against the back of the seat wasn’t enough to cool things down.

“Whose fucking idea was Puerto Rico?” Clay slid down to lie across the back seat, boots up on the door and arm over his eyes. Usually, that was Roque’s line. He’d rant about who-the-fuck-ever got them in the shit like Clay had nothing to do with it. It used to be kind of an inside joke that loosened the tension when they were all ready to eat Clay’s soul for whatever was going wrong. Right until the end.

“Yours.” Cougar slouched in his seat and pulled up his jeans to check out his leg. Ash blown from his cigarette speckled Pooch’s arm like confetti.

“Give me that fucking thing.” Pooch confiscated it from him and took a drag. “Your foot fall off yet?”

“Almost.” The bullet tear was healing slowly, the stitches weren’t oozing pus anymore, the redness had receded to a patch smaller than his palm. “Jensen keeps an eye on it.”

“Can’t believe you two do anything other than fuck,” Clay said sleepily.

“We can’t all have a perfect relationship like you and Aisha.” Pooch handed the cigarette back to Cougar once he’d yanked his cuff down over his boot.

“Point.” Cougar could see Clay’s hand with the cigarette gesturing magnanimously. “But be aware, I am trying to set a good example for you kids.”

“I think if you were, we’d get to watch,” Pooch pointed out. “I mean, what if we’re doing it wrong?”

“Cougar’s not doing it wrong.” Clay aimed a lazy kick at the headrest of Cougar’s seat. “Was not nearly deaf enough to miss that, by the way.”

“Oops.” Cougar hadn’t been sure, hadn’t cared much, either. Jensen might have but he didn’t. Clay could deal.

“What, no apology?”

Cougar turned just enough that Clay could see his eyes and gave him a wicked grin. “Not a damn one.”

***

The Albatross looked like its namesake, an ungainly grey-white beast lurking at the end of the dock. They took possession of it in the grey-black predawn of the next morning and loaded it with a few things--supplies, parachutes, guns, explosives. The thing was a sixty-five-foot flying bomb. Pooch was reviewing their intended course with the old man who’d watched them fetch and carry from his rocking chair by the fuel pumps at the dock.

“He knows there’s something there,” Pooch said, coming back with the map freshly marked. “Says no one goes out to it, but he saw it on some old maps when he was younger.”

“You sure the continents haven’t moved since then?” Jensen squinted at the map.

“I’m just glad to get some alternate confirmation.” Clay tipped his sunglasses up to look over Pooch’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t put it past Max to send us out to drown in the middle of nowhere.”

“Nice to see you feeling optimistic, man.” Jensen patted Clay on the shoulder and took off to help Aisha with the cooler she was carrying.

“Let’s do this thing.” Clay squinted up at the sky. It was hazy white-blue and hot as hell. The plane didn’t have air conditioning, it was already a floating crucible. “Weather?”

“Storms headed toward Louisiana area,” Pooch folded up the map and tucked it away in favour of a tablet. “We might hit some rain. If we weren’t short on time I’d say we should wait but we don’t want to miss Max.”

“Let’s go if we’re going.” It was nearly full day now and if Cougar had picked up enough of the math-babble between Pooch and Jensen, they’d reach their destination some time after dark.

“I’ll make sure the gear is strapped down. You and Jensen run the checks,” Clay said to Pooch. “You make sure no one shoots us while we’re at it.” He pointed Cougar back up the hill to where the van and car were parked. “Make sure they’re cleaned out as well. Wipe them down. We’ll be gone in an hour.”

***

Cougar hated commercial air travel. This wasn’t bad by comparison. Oppressively hot. The old plane rattled and dithered if the wind caught her wrong. A tablet taped to the control panel gave more information--inconsistent satellite connection aside--than most of the cloudy dials. The cargo hold stank of meth and hash. A wheezing refrigerator was crudely bolted to the hold wall and wired into the plane’s power. Stains in the bottom looked suspiciously like blood. Not bad at all.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon behind them, he sprawled in the co-pilot’s seat and finished off a cold Coke while Pooch flew the plane. Clay had his feet up again, still sleeping off the headache from his concussion. His bruises were in full bloom, he looked wrecked. Jensen had been in the pilot’s seat for hours to let Pooch sleep. Now, he was back with Aisha who was looking more than a little green.

She hadn’t struck Cougar as a bad flyer but she’d been off since the day they rescued the kids. He didn’t know what was up but Jensen was looking after her. It didn’t bother him to see her snuggled up against Jensen’s chest the way it would have a week ago. Jensen looked up to catch Cougar watching, his expression shifted from concern to something soft and open that made Cougar’s gut hot.

“Damn it.” Pooch tapped the tablet. “Did Jensen say how to get this thing going when it craps out? It’s been down fifteen minutes now.”

“We’re getting out of antenna range,” Cougar said, once he’d paged back through his memories to find the note. He wanted to see that look on Jensen’s face again, wanted to kiss him on the mouth instead of talking. “He’s got a portable antenna we didn’t have time to install, he was hoping the signal would carry out this far but the plane’s skin is too thick. He can install it if we land.” That meant they wouldn’t get into too much trouble. They had plenty of fuel. “It comes and goes.”

“Going more than coming.” Pooch checked their heading on the dials and consulted the map. “I’m going to take us up some, see if I can’t pick up the signal.” He pulled back on the stick and the engines changed their tune, pitching higher.

The light was dying fast. The red-streaked sea was almost lost in darkness below them, the lavender streak of anti-twilight ahead was gone into grey dusk. Suddenly it was that time of day when land and sea and sky took on the same colour so that only gravity and touch would tell them apart. Even then, gravity was a fickle bitch. Cougar felt something creep along his nerves, pricking up the hairs on his arms.

“Pooch.”

“/Shit/.” His voice was dull. “J., get up here. Everyone else, strap in.”

“What the hell.” Jensen nearly got tangled with Cougar on his way to his seat. He looked out the windows then started working on the tablet. “Hang on, let me try and get us a signal.” He pulled a phone from his pocket, then a length of cable, and plugged it in, started typing on it. Cougar got to the seat next to Aisha and strapped in just in time for the plane to buck like an angry bull.

“Jensen, sit the fuck down,” Pooch snapped.

“Can’t. Using this as an antenna.” Jensen had duct tape in another pocket, he braced himself between the seats as the plane yawed. The first drops of rain hit the windscreen.

“Jensen, for fuck’s sake.” The words were out of Cougar’s mouth before he could stop them. His body ached with straining against the seat harness. Worse, Jensen jammed a foot against Pooch’s seat to get more height, stretching so he could tape the phone to the highest point of the windshield.

“Got it.” Jensen slapped it into place, the face of the tablet lit up with what was unmistakably, even from Cougar’s seat, the satellite map of a sprawling storm system. He dropped into his seat and started to strap in while Pooch fought to keep the plane steady. “Take us up.”

“We can’t get over it.”

“It’ll be worse if we don’t.” Jensen’s voice was taut. “I’ll see if I can get us a course to the south.”

“I don’t think we’ll make it.” Pooch sounded as though he were talking through his clenched teeth. “This whole system is rolling toward Puerto Rico, not the mainland.”

“Other options?” Clay was awake now, upright and leaning forward to see the screen.

“We stay as high as we can and hope we can cut through the storm to land near the theoretical island we’re headed for.” Jensen pulled his computer out of the bag slung across the back of his chair and started working. “There’s a bay on the lee side. If we can hit it, we can probably ride this thing out.”

“What are our chances of that?”

“Shitty to not good at all.” Jensen looked over his shoulder. “Like all our other options.”

“Pooch?”

“Did we pack a life boat? I hope we packed a fucking life boat.” The muscles stood out along Pooch’s arms as the plane fought the wind. “Come on, baby, be good. Don’t do this to Daddy.”

Clay beckoned to Cougar and he unbuckled, lurching from his seat to the doorframe to the cargo netting that lined the hold wall opposite the loading doors. There wasn’t room for fear if you were focused. Fear got people killed. They’d done this before. It might as well have been another drill.

“Everyone needs their gear on them, including their floaters.” Clay had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind as he followed Cougar. “Don’t inflate them until you’re out of the plane. Do not be stupid. Do not die. Turn your transponders on now so we can find each other. Do not worry about Max right now. I’ll be damned if I lose one of you to some fucking weather at this stage of the game.”


	26. In This Together Now (#20. Teamwork)

Night drops. Drills. Nothing prepared anyone for jumping out of a moving plane in the pitch black and driving rain, nothing but doing it before. The lightning was coming in bursts like a strobe light flicked on and off, wind and rain roared through the open cargo door and Jensen had to brace himself to keep from being blown back into the plane.

“We’ll be fine.” Jensen had to shout for Aisha to hear him. “Let’s go.” When lightning swept the sky and lit everything up in white and purple, he could see the black water below and the shoreline in the distance. Twenty feet to the surface, three hundred feet to shore. He grabbed the straps of Aisha’s pack with both hands and she did the same to him. A second flash lit up her terrified face as he dropped them both out into the chaos.

He came up with a grip on her, still, and pulled the cord on his life vest to stay afloat. Aisha did the same, letting go of him to keep from being tossed around by the waves. She was so much smaller, she was at a huge disadvantage. If Jensen lost her, she could be swept away from him before he could see where she’d gone.

A wave crashed over them both and when he came up, in the next flash of light, he couldn’t see a thing along the plane’s path. No plane. No flare. Nothing. It was as though they’d disappeared into another dimension. Another burst of lightning and crash of thunder. He should have seen Clay’s flare to mark the boat that was going out the door right after them.

Clay would have pulled the cord on that and then sent up a flare so they could head for it as it inflated. Pooch and Cougar should have abandoned the plane right behind Clay. The plane, set on what Pooch called “ghetto autopilot”--the stick was duct taped into place between the pilot’s seat and the control panel--would have continued to lose height but kept course, aimed for what had looked like a river that let out into the bay where he and Aisha were treading water.

There was nothing out there but shades of black. Jensen ignored the sensation of Aisha shaking him and the sound of her voice raised over the storm. Nothing mattered. Not the cold of the ocean, not the roar of the storm. He was consumed with watching for fire, listening for an explosion. Nothing. It had been maybe ninety seconds for him to fall, surface, orient himself... another wave went over him and sucked him down so deep he almost lost hold of Aisha.

“J!” The lightning washed out her colour, turned her into a ghost. “Where are they?”

“We need to get to shore.” He didn’t have an answer for her. His floatation device and treading water together were barely keeping him afloat with all his gear. As he pulled out his compass and thumbed the button for the LED inside, waves crashed over his head and he had to time his breath to keep from inhaling water. The currents and wind were pushing them out of the bay. “Northeast is this way. Just swim. Don’t worry about anything else until we hit land.” He’d get their exact coordinates one they were out of the water.

Half an hour in, Aisha faltered and he had to tow her with her back to his chest and his arm around her waist. He wasn’t cold where she touched him, she was feverish. An hour in, he resolved--if they lived through this--to work out more, to go back to church, to call his mother, to punch Max in the face, to never pass up a chance to kiss Cougar, to take a vacation, to do anything the universe wanted as long as he got out of this.

He’d lost all track of where they were, he was just keeping on the right course as best he could. How long could he swim? He’d gone miles in the past but not in gear, not in a storm. There was as much chance of drowning face up as face down, the rain was so thick. The winds had died down and he could only hope it was because they’d made it into the lee of the shore. In spite of everything, he was starting to panic when his heel hit something dense and soft. Sand.

“Aisha. Stand up.” He was shaking with the cold, she was weak, but they got to their feet and hung on to each other like children with the waves pounding their backs and the current sucking at their ankles.

The shoreline was a wide band of black with a ragged edge where the trees met the clouds. Jensen wasn’t sure he’d seen anything so perfect in his life. They floundered and splashed the last twenty feet to shore where they fought their way up the sodden sand to collapse in the meagre shelter of the storm-lashed trees.

“You’re sick.” He tried not to make it sound like an accusation as he fought his way out of his life vest and pack.

“Just. Just out of medication.” He couldn’t see Aisha, but she leaned against his knee and he could feel her breathe. “It’s just a little bug.” In the light, if she were less exhausted, she might have been able to throw him off. Like this, with nothing but tone and timing to go on, he could pick out the lie.

“When?” She didn’t answer, she just grabbed at Jensen’s hand, the squeeze she gave him a wordless demand to be helped up. “Aisha, I need to know. We have to work together and I need to know how sick you are so we can work around it.”

“Christ, you sound like Clay and his teamwork bullshit.” Aisha sounded frustrated. Jensen found her hands in the dark, they were shaking too hard to undo her life vest.

“Yeah, that’s because he’s right.” Jensen realized then, for the first time, that she wasn’t used to having a team. If he’d been sick like this, he would have told someone. Someone would have noticed. He wouldn’t have been hiding it the way she was. He would have wanted the team to compensate so he wasn’t a liability. “When did you start feeling like this? Symptoms?” He got her pack off of her and pulled out the emergency blanket to wrap her up as he sat her down with her back to a tree.

“Stomach flu kind of thing, high fever. Around the time of the car bomb.” The waver in her voice wasn’t from cold. It was fear. “I got something for it.”

“You’re not telling me something.” Jensen took the time to check and clear his gun, making sure it’d still fire after the long swim, before he got to making them a shelter. He needed to work fast before his legs gave up on him. The wind was throttled down to a dull howl under the trees, the rain was just a constant shower instead the pounding of an open fire hose.

“It’s stupid. Paranoid.”

“Let me decide.” Jensen ripped the top off an energy pack and sucked the too-sweet berry-flavoured protein gel out of it while he pulled out a tarp and rope. “Eat,” he ordered around the foil pack clenched in his teeth.

“There was someone following her.” Aisha unwrapped something that sounded like a rations bar. Couldn’t eat that hands-free, sadly. “I think he made me. I didn’t think so at the time, not when he bumped into me. It was only after.”

“When the car blew up?”

“When I got sick.”

Jensen stopped trying to make his cold-stiff hands work. “Why?” He was cold in a different way.

“I’m just being paranoid.” Aisha stopped, but when he waited, she spoke again. “Something kind of jabbed me in the leg. I thought it was a pen or something on the bag he was carrying. It didn’t leave much of a mark. But then I got sick. And the fever. I felt really stupid and confused. Not so much I couldn’t look after Clay. But now it’s better.”

“As soon as we can move, we’re getting out of here.” Jensen tied the rope off with an angry jerk and started cutting stakes for the tarp to hold it to the ground on the windward side.

“You can’t tell Clay. Jensen, please. It’s probably nothing.” Aisha grabbed his leg above the knee. Her fingers dug painfully into his thigh. “It’s going to take us a day or two to find Max. We can’t get out of here without him knowing about it. Telling Clay will do nothing but make this worse.”

“We shouldn’t even be here,” Jensen hissed, dropping down to a crouch in front of her. He pulled out his flashlight and held it against his thigh, tipping it only enough to leak a little light to see her by. “We wouldn’t have come if... if you’re right.” There were limited options with the delivery system she described and the only one that would let her get better in this time frame was the worst one he could imagine. Worst than killing her outright.

“I wasn’t that sick. The fever wasn’t that bad. He must not have gotten the full dose in me,” Aisha said as though she’d thought this through enough times. “My chances are fifty percent right now. We have a week or so to get treatment. If we did it before we dealt with Max, he’d find us. I don’t think it was meant for the Professor.”

Jensen sat back, holding the tarp down with his ass while he sharpened the stakes. “That makes sense.” It did, in the most horrible way. Max had laid the trap for them when they’d gone to get the van. He’d laid a better one when he had the time and the target. “You’re assuming it’s polonium.” He didn’t even want to say it out loud.

“Yes. I should be feeling fine by the time the storm breaks if it’s on schedule.”

“Then we have two weeks on average after that.” Jensen stabbed the wet earth with a fresh stake, then again, pinning the tarp. “Don’t keep secrets from us anymore, Aisha. Team. You’re on the team.”

“Please. I’m just fucking Clay until we find Max.”

“Fuck you.” Jensen pulled out his canteen. God, fresh water tasted so good after all that salt. “You think we let everyone Clay fucks come along? You think we couldn’t have dumped you or something?” He crawled over to sprawl next to her. “Give us some fucking credit.” It sounded far less manly than it should have, thanks to his chattering teeth.

“Okay. Yeah.” Aisha put her head on his shoulder and exhaled slowly. “Thanks, J.”

By the time the rain stopped, Jensen had picked up the transponder signals on his tablet. Three of them together. In truth, he hadn’t had the time to get worried about them. He flicked his transponder on and off in Morse code. _Lost?_

 _F. U._ , said one of the lights on his screen. With that, the lights blinked out. Next time they had contact, it’d be in person at the coordinates they’d marked out. High ground.

By the time the sun was out, Aisha was awake and looking well--for now. Seven to twenty-eight days. Their clothes dried as they walked, the mosquitos swarmed, the sun got hotter with every hour.

At noon, in a valley, Jensen caught a flash of light up on a green hill above them. He read the message. _Lost?_

“Fucker.”

“He’s your boyfriend,” Aisha said with a snort. “You picked him.”

“Yeah. It could be worse, I guess.” Jensen started picking a path up the ridge. His tiredness melted away. “I could be sleeping with Clay.”

 

 


	27. The Advantages of Absence (#16. I Told You So)

_Situation normal: all fucked up_. The cliche wouldn’t stop echoing around in Cougar’s head when the plane pitched in an unexpected downdraft, then the case containing the boat got away from Clay and Cougar and slammed against the far wall, nearly taking Clay out. The shift in weight was too much, Pooch couldn’t get control of the plane back enough for them to get out before they were nearly in the trees. The pontoons hit the water and bounced them up again.

Cougar buckled himself into the seat nearest the hold door and hung on. He had a better chance of surviving and staying conscious here. It was too late to dump the fuel. His hands were cold as he checked his gear by touch to make sure he had what he needed when they hit whatever was waiting for them out there. All he could see was black beyond the windscreen.

What should have been a ditch and recovery was going to be a crash. If they were lucky. If they were unlucky, it was going to be a fireball.

Pooch held it together long enough to send them up along what Jensen had correctly guessed was a small river. The wings clipped the trees on either side, the pontoons slapped the water again, then dug in, slamming Cougar forward against his harness so hard he heard his teeth crash together. The world lit up with lightning in time for Cougar to see the water coming up over the windscreen but the plane was still moving, pitching forward and rolling to the right.

“Going over,” Pooch yelled.

The sensation of the flip was sickening. Everything came to a halt nearly upside down and at an angle. The engines died, all Cougar could hear was the rush and gurgle of water pouring in the open cargo door.

“Pooch?” Cougar undid his buckles and twisted awkwardly as he fell. Cold water was already washing around inside the cockpit. Breathing hurt, his head was pounding, but he was in one piece.

“Still here.” Pooch flipped on his flashlight. He was moving slowly, left arm close to his chest. “Clay?” He raised his voice as he and Cougar sloshed toward the hold. “You alive back there?”

“Worst. Landing. Ever.” Clay sounded rough but at least he was conscious. “Help me with the boat.”

The case with the damn boat was half-afloat, banging against the doorframe between the cockpit and hold. Cougar put his shoulder to it and shoved it out of the way, freeing Pooch to go after Clay, who was entangled in the cargo netting that had kept him safe during the crash.

The rain was coming down in sheets, the river was swollen to a torrent rushing out to sea. They were in about ten feet of water under steep banks and tall trees. The lightning lit things up so that Cougar could see the plane was upside down, one wing buried in the riverbed, tail caught in the trees. He could see the fire burning in the second engine, smell the smoke.

He couldn’t see the mouth of the river from where they were, they’d been carrying a lot of speed. Jensen and Aisha were out at sea somewhere, on their own. Full gear. Currents, waves, rain, and wind. In theory they’d manage.

Jensen was the smartest person Cougar knew, he reminded himself. Young, strong, smart, and every reason to keep his head above water. What Jensen couldn’t do for himself he’d find a way to do for someone else if they needed it. He’d make it, for his friends, if nothing else. That was one of the reasons Cougar loved him.

“Jesus.” Clay teetered in the doorway, staring out at the same thing Cougar was--a lot of dark and distance. “We can’t go after them them.”

By the time they made their way out the river, they’d have no guarantee that Jensen and Aisha would be anywhere they could reach in good time. The rules never changed--get safe, then regroup. The plane rocked as the river battered it, sliding dangerously.

“How are we?” Clay flipped his light on and pointed it down, taking a look from one of them to the other. Cougar tested his ribs, sucking in air as deep as he dared. It hurt but not enough to bother with. Pooch looked in worse shape.

“Think I broke my collarbone,” he said with a wince. The crash alone might not have done it, but the impact of the crash on the scars of an old injury would have snapped it easily enough.

“I’ll go up first.” Cougar oriented himself to the new arrangement of things and found the their climbing gear strapped to the gear raft that was supposed to go out with him and Pooch. “Send up what you can.” With any luck they’d manage to salvage most of it.

It took over an hour to secure lines to stabilize the plane and longer to pull up what they needed, including the boat. They’d need to get away from the island before sending up a mayday. Cougar was drenched to the skin, hands bleeding from hauling lines. Pooch came up first, with Cougar’s help, then Clay behind him.

Not thinking was easy. They’d been in similar situations. The gaps left by Roque and Jensen were there but glossed over fast enough. By the time Cougar was crouched under shelter, assessing what he’d done to his hands, he’d gotten used to it and he hated it, the way he was already thinking of how to get out of this with just the three of them.

They took turns staying awake, but none of them could sleep well. Clay got one of the tablets working but couldn’t get a read on any signals from the area. It was the storm, Cougar told himself. Or they’d forgotten some step in the instructions. In the morning, when they could act, they’d worry.

The rain tapered off toward dawn and Cougar picked up the tablet to play with it. His hands hurt, he’d done a shoddy job of bandaging them. He missed Jensen all over again, now that he had time. He remembered Jensen sitting on the floor, bandaging his feet and hands after he’d worked too hard too many days in a row, the gentleness of his touch and way the morning light looked on his bare skin.

Finding Jensen’s sparse documentation for his program was easy enough, but it took Cougar a little while to parse it. When he did figure out how to increase the range, there was nothing on his first scan. On the second, there was a flicker, then he picked up two signals. One blinked out, then back on.

_Lost?_

“Asshole.” Cougar sighed and ran a hand over his face, then sent back two letters. _F.U._  They were fine. Time to work out how to get to where they were supposed to meet up if things went south.

“They okay?” Clay was sitting up, waiting, taut with worry.

“Okay enough for Jensen to be a little punk,” Cougar grumbled, though he was trying not to smile with relief. Suddenly being cold, clammy, stiff, and sore wasn’t so bad at all. “Accused us of being lost.” Then he put together the look on Clay’s face with his own worry. “I’m sure Aisha’s fine. They both showed up and Jensen wouldn’t...”

“Wouldn’t be an ass if she wasn’t okay.” Clay nodded slowly. “Okay. Let’s pack what we need and move out.”

The heat was oppressive, the air was green and wet. The ground slid under their feet with every step where it wasn’t ankle-deep muck. It was a harder march than any of them had made since Bolivia. The similarities were uncomfortable. Cougar was better off than the other two so he carried most of the gear--if not for the hard labour he’d done while living with Jensen he’d have struggled beyond the sting of mosquitos and the burning of the straps eating away at his shoulders.

They made it to the ridge first, to the high ground that had marked the edge of the mapped region around the telescope site. Cougar could see the bared site from their vantage point. He left Clay and Pooch to start mapping while he watched for Jensen and Aisha. When he caught sight of them, he flipped open his compass to use the mirror inside the cover.

 _Lost?_  he signalled. Through the scope, he could see Jensen’s eyeroll, read his lips.

_Fucker._

“They’re on their way. An hour, at most,” he told Clay. “They both look fine,” he added. “I can show you where...”

“It’s okay. You say they’re fine.” Clay waved Cougar off but the worry on his bruised, tired face didn’t fade.

“Clay.” Pooch smacked him in the arm with the long-range binoculars. “Just go see for yourself. You’ll feel better.”

“Fine.” Clay took the binoculars, glaring at both of them as he limped off.

“Damn. The two of you.” Pooch gave Cougar an accusatory look before turning back to his sketching. “You all are going to give me an ulcer. Make some lunch, will you?”

“Oh, like you got everything right with Jolene.” Still, Cougar got to unpacking their supplies to make lunch.

“Met her on assignment, kept seeing her after, asked her to marry me,” Pooch said as though it were that simple. “I just knew, so did she. The Pooch knows, I told you. You gotta stop making a deal of it and do what there is to do. You pull the trigger like it’s no big thing, man. I can’t do that. This is nothing next to that. If you let yourself know it, you’ll know, too.”

Just knew. Cougar wasn’t sure what he knew. It was still nagging at him when he heard Jensen’s voice.

“What’s a guy got to do to get fed around here?” Cougar turned around from helping Pooch with the maps to see Jensen shrugging out of his pack. He was sunburnt and filthy, like the rest of them, and he flashed Cougar a grin. “Or were you waiting for me to do the cooking?”

“You can wash up after.” Cougar straightened, brushing caked mud off his knees.

“What’d I say about doing this yourself?” When Cougar looked up, Jensen was right there, taking his hands to look over the dirty bandages with a critical eye.

“You weren’t here,” Cougar said simply. He didn’t have any other excuse.

“My bad, then. I’ll try not to do it again.” The humour faded from Jensen’s voice and he let go of Cougar’s hands to cup his face instead as he leaned in for a kiss. When he was done, he let his forehead rest against Cougar’s and murmured, “I promised myself I wouldn’t waste any more chances to do that.”

“It’s a good promise.” Cougar ran his raw fingertips over Jensen’s stubbled cheek. “Missed you,” he admitted. It felt like stepping out into a gunfight, the way it made his heart jump to let the words go.

“Yeah.” Jensen nodded slightly. “Me too.”

“You two planning to eat or are you just going to cuddle?” Clay didn’t sound nearly as cranky as the words suggested.

They settled down to eat together, all five of them. Pooch elbowed Cougar in the side with his good arm.

“What?” Cougar resisted the urge to push him off the log they were sitting on. Jensen sat on the ground, back to Cougar’s legs, filling Clay in on what he’d missed.

“Know anything yet?” Pooch tipped his sunglasses down to look at Cougar.

Cougar rolled the question around in his head, then he stopped fighting it and listened to the way it felt to be this close, to the way he’d felt seeing Jensen there in one piece. “Yeah. I do.”

"And?"

"You were right."

“I told you so,” Pooch said sagely. “The Pooch knows all.”

 

 

 


	28. Rest When You're Done (#19. Sleeping In)

“I’ve been here before,” Clay said. “On maneuvers. Nineteen-ninety-four.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Aisha looked up from the IED she and Jensen were putting together.

“I said I’ve been here before. I didn’t say I knew where it was.” Clay was looking out toward the build site, arms crossed over his chest. A dull green scarf was wrapped around his head and shoulders like a keffiyeh. From this angle, Jensen couldn’t see his face. “It took me a while to see it. It’s changed. We didn’t see how we got here, we arrived at night, by boat.”

“Why isn’t it on any maps?” Cougar had been crouched on the far side of the ridge, trying to get a line on the best way from the site to where they’d left the plane but he came back now, unslinging his rifle.

“There was a study going on here. They found a native tribe that they were observing, didn’t want anyone to know about them--or that’s what they told us.” Clay didn’t sound sure now. “We saw them, though, back then. At a distance. It seemed legit. But. A lot of things did then.”

“And now?” Pooch buckled up the pack he was putting together. He’d redistributed the gear so that most of it would fall to Jensen and Aisha, then Clay, leaving Cougar free to scout ahead without much more than his weapons. Pooch would only carry the bare necessities and some medical gear, he’d have enough trouble managing with one arm.

“I don’t see the settlement. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t put it together. But if Puerto Rico was a good place for that telescope, this one is even better. That’s why Max is building it here.” Clay shook his head slowly. “He shouldn’t even know about it.”

“Max does a lot of things he shouldn’t.” Jensen pushed to his feet, leaving Aisha to pack the bomb away. They didn’t have any mines or mortars, they were trying to make do. He really missed having actual gear, good weapons, real intel instead of whatever he managed to hack.

“Not for long. Did that camera survive the swim?” Clay put the binoculars away.

“I put it in a plastic bag.” Jensen rolled his eyes. He’d learned his lesson about that years ago. “Don’t worry. I’ll get the pictures.”

“What are the chances that this is a legit CIA operation?” Cougar put his rifle down and hefted his pack to test the weight, then helped Pooch get up when Pooch snapped his fingers at him.

“Legit and CIA don’t go together that often,” Clay murmured. “But I think Max is off the reservation. It’s strange, I’m pretty sure the settlement used to be around here somewhere. Like I said. Ninety-four. I can see the airstrip, there’s nothing there that looks like a plane Max would use, so he’s not here yet.”

Jensen needed to make some adjustments to the packs before they put them on. He didn’t want Aisha carrying close to her full load. The less stress on her, the better, especially while she was recovering from last night. Fortunately, Pooch and Cougar were on their way over to take a look at what Clay had been seeing and Aisha was making sure they didn’t blow themselves up with their own defences. It didn’t take long for him to transfer a few heavier items into his pack and rearrange things so that the difference wasn’t immediately visible.

“We should get going,” he said when he was done, gesturing to Aisha to toss him their little project.

“Damn it, Jensen, I wish you two wouldn’t throw explosives around,” Clay grumbled.

“It’s not armed,” Aisha said, scrambling to her feet and brushing grass off her ass. She picked up a grey-green strip of cotton jersey and wrapped it around her head and neck in a few swift motions. “Don’t know what you’re worried about.”

“Wasn’t worried last night.” Clay took his pack from Jensen and slung it on. “Look what happened then.”

“Hey, we didn’t even blow up.” Jensen was starting to worry about Clay as well. Depressed. That was the word for it. Clay was rarely this grim. He’d been greyer than ever since the car bombing. Hopefully it was just a lingering headache. “We’re fine.”

Clay helped Aisha get her pack on while Cougar got Pooch armed and checked his sling, then shouldered his own gear. Jensen stared down at his pack for a moment--it’d been a while since he’d carried this much gear--and then hefted it to sling it on. He really was going to work out more. No more video games, damn it.

“Everyone knows the course and the second meet point?” Clay checked his map and then looked around at them. The island was all rolling green at first glance, but the hills and valleys would be far harder to travel than they seemed. They had more than twenty miles to cover, once the terrain was taken into account. If they got separated, they’d meet at a fork where the thin river below them broke off from the source. Crossing that to get to the site would be something else entirely.

“We’re good.” Jensen tugged his hat down to keep the sunlight from glinting off of his glasses before he started walking. Cougar forged ahead, Aisha took point, Clay brought up the rear leaving Jensen and Pooch to keep each other company.

It was a quiet march, they couldn’t afford to make noise and they were all tired already. The ground was soft, it slipped and slid with every slope and turn. Sweat turned Jensen’s skin slick, tickled down his scalp, pooled around his toes. He wasn’t ever going to be dry again. About four hours in, when Pooch dropped back to talk to Clay, Cougar slithered down a slope and fell in next to Jensen. He was as sweat-drenched as Jensen but he wore it better, all copper and gloss and hair so black it glittered in the green light filtering down through the trees.

“You can’t coddle her,” he muttered as he unwrapped a protein bar.

“What?” Jensen was focused on putting one foot in front of the other on the uneven terrain.

“Aisha, she can carry her own weight.” Cougar broke the bar in half and waved part of it at Jensen. “You’re overloaded. You should shift some off on me.”

“I can carry it. You need to move.” Jensen took the bar and bit into it. “I’m fine, man. Don’t worry about me. You didn’t see me making a big deal over you working too hard.”

“Right.” Cougar’s eyeroll was audible. “Like you didn’t get up every morning to make me my breakfast. Even when I wasn’t working.”

“I liked that part.” It felt safe to say so now, even though Jensen was short on words right now. “Wasn’t just for you.”

“Oh?” Jensen glanced over to see Cougar watching him.

“Is that weird?” Cougar actually had to think about that, it seemed, which didn’t make Jensen feel any more comfortable. “What?”

“Not weird.” Cougar’s ponytail flicked over his shoulders as he shook his head abruptly. “When we’re done here...” He stopped talking as quickly as he’d started. He got a little superstitious sometimes. Talking about ‘after’ wasn’t always good luck.

Jensen let it go and was ready to talk about soccer or something when Cougar’s fingers ran down the inside of his wrist in a delicate, intimate caress.

“You should sleep in sometimes,” Cougar said, as though it had nothing to with what they’d just been discussing. “I’ll make breakfast.”

“Okay.” Jensen caught Cougar’s hand in his briefly, careful of the bandages. “As long as you’re not working too hard.”

“Hypocrite.”

“That’s me. My middle name, even.” Jensen winked at Cougar, then laughed at his expression. “Here we are living together and you didn’t know my middle name.”

“You’re impossible.” Cougar tapped Jensen in the belly with his knuckles, then slogged ahead to catch up with Aisha. “We head down here,” he said. “This ridge doubles back if we don’t get off it.”

Downhill was going to be hell. The muck was bad enough, but the undergrowth was sparse here, the ridge was undercut--something they hadn’t seen from where they were.

“Do we want a line?” Jensen asked, stepping up to the edge to gauge the slope and locate a likely tree. There wasn’t much here, compared to the rest of the area so he turned around to look up for a place to set a line. He felt the earth shift a moment before the whole ridge slid.

It was the fast way down. The face of the ridge came away and carried them down. Jensen was up to his knees in loose, wet earth. Grabbing a tree only wrenched his arm and he felt his elbow pop painfully before he lost his balance entirely. When the ground stopped moving, he flailed to get his face out of the muck, his hands sinking into the mess every time he tried to get a grip on something, anything.

His hand hit something hard and smooth, he thought it was a stone but it came loose from the earth and came away in his hand. Dirt-packed eye sockets stared at him, the teeth grinned, the jaw dangled from one joint.

“Shit.” He fought to kneeling, looking for the others, and looked back up the hill. Skeletons hung from the raw earth like the exposed roots of a strange tree.

“Everyone okay?” That was Cougar, he and Aisha had managed to skip out of the slide and were working their way down together.

“I think we found your lost tribe, Clay.” Jensen turned and located him sprawled against a tree with Pooch, held up the skull. “Guess it’s not that legit.” He placed the skull down carefully, refusing to think about being covered in graveyard muck.

“Max.” Clay sounded like the word was a stone in his teeth.

“We’ll take care of it,” Aisha assured him.

“One of us will,” Cougar said.

“We need to keep moving.” Pooch let Clay help him up. “And we need to wash off the genocide before it starts to soak in.”

They camped two hours later, at the fork in the river. Jensen felt as though he’d been beaten. He was still taking inventory of what hurt from the fall. At least it was dusk when he was washing up and he didn’t have to see it all clearly.

“You look like shit,” Cougar said, coming down to the river’s edge with Jensen's dry clothes in hand, rifle on his back.

“I think I swallowed dead people dirt.” That was actually very gross.

“That’s no reason not to get your ass up to eat.”

“What, you’re not having fun watching me?” Jensen waded out to dry land and towelled off with his fresh T-shirt before pulling it on. “I thought you liked doing that.” He emerged from the T-shirt to Cougar’s kiss and Cougar’s hand on his bare hip.

“Like this better.”

“When we’re done here,” Jensen said, and left it at that so he could kiss Cougar back while Cougar felt him up shamelessly. They really didn’t need to say anything else. They both knew what they wanted when this was over. No sense jinxing it.

“Yeah.” Cougar pulled him close with a hand on his ass, his gear pressing into Jensen’s flesh, all hard edges. “When we’re done here.”


	29. Rise and Fall (#10. Apologies)

Cougar was awake before the sunrise, before Clay woke them. He lay in the hammock with Jensen as long as he could, head on Jensen’s shoulder, feeling Jensen’s heart beat under his hand. It had rained again in the night, slow and steady, a constant drumming on the fly stretched over the hammock to keep them dry. Now, the dripping from the trees was random, tiny bursts of noise agains the hot, quiet night.

“Time is it?” Jensen mumbled, lifting his hand with the watch for Cougar to hit the light button.

“Five.” The time they used to get up. “Clay’s on watch.”

“I’ll get up.” Jensen slung a leg out of the hammock before Cougar hauled him back in.

“No you won’t.” Cougar hadn’t missed the deep bruises from the pack or the fall when Jensen was bathing in the river last night. “Stay.” He slid up a little so that he could kiss Jensen on the mouth. Pooch was snoring, Aisha was out of sight, and Clay had his back to them over by the fire.

“Do I get more kisses?” Jensen negotiated. He yawned and stretched under Cougar, then winced, too tired to hide it.

“Something like that.” Getting his hands all over Jensen was the farthest thing from a hardship that Cougar could imagine, short of sex. He ran his thumb up the tight line of Jensen’s neck and was rewarded with an immediate sigh of pleasure. The way Jensen let his head fall to the side to let Cougar at his neck, the way his eyes fluttered shut--maybe it was going to be more of a hardship than he’d anticipated. “Someone’s got to back up your white-knighting. I’ll go put the water on.”

Clay had taken the third watch and Cougar found him looking over Jensen’s composite map pieced together from photographs they’d taken whenever they had a vantage point. He was making some adjustments to it as Cougar came over to see.

“Remember something?” Cougar picked up the collapsible jugs to refill the filter system hanging from a tree so they could fill their bottles as well as having breakfast. 

“Just working out the best vantage point for when the plane lands. Here.” Clay pointed to the far side of the airstrip. “I’ll want you there to cover the area. I'll have Jensen doing the photographs. Once we have the evidence we need, we’ll regroup and discuss getting the rest of the explosives out of the plane to break the whole site down.”

“Got it.” Cougar got things started before he settled back down with Clay to go through Jensen’s pack for some clean clothes for both of them.

“I’m sorry,” Clay said quietly.

“Sorry? For what?” Cougar looked up from trying to figure out if the T-shirt he held was his or Jensen’s.

“This shit with Max. This is on me.” Clay looked grim.

“Fuck that.” Cougar gave up. Jensen could tell their things apart--he’d settle for wearing his own underwear. “You think we weren’t all in it with you?”

“Chain of command,” Clay said dully, spinning the tablet in his hands.

“If I disagreed with you enough, I’d have shot you.” Cougar did Jensen’s pack back up. “Give it up. Roque disagreed, he quit. We didn’t. We’re fine. Max needs to pay somehow, we’re all agreed. We do what we think is right.”

“Fair enough.” Clay nodded slowly.

“Aisha okay?” The weight of Jensen’s pack reminded Cougar that Jensen was worried about her.

“Yeah.” Clay shook his head to clear it and then reached for the rattling kettle over the fire. “Why?”

“Don’t know. Just... seemed something might be off.” Cougar got up and shrugged it off. “It’s probably nothing. We’re all tired.” Always, lately. He couldn’t remember if there was a saint of the perpetually exhausted.

He brought Jensen clean clothes and managed to rub his back under guise of rubbing in some insect repellant. He’d remember the way Jensen’s muscled back felt under his hands when he smelled the yellow chemical tang of the repellant from now on. The thought that they’d have time--lots of time--once Max was dead made him feel less like he was wasting this moment.

“Cougar.” Jensen’s voice was soft and lazy. His forehead rested on his knees. Cougar ran his fingers up the vulnerable line of his spine to the tanned nape of his neck. “You really going to kill him? Without Clay’s call?”

“Yes.” Cougar leaned forward, pressing his chest to Jensen’s back, and kissed Jensen’s shoulder. “He was never the one doing the calling. It was men like Max. People it was my job to trust.”

“I just.” Jensen straightened enough to turn his head so he could kiss Cougar on the mouth, tangling his hand in Cougar’s hair. “Don’t get me wrong. I want him gone. I worry about you. You’re not...”

“What? A killer?” Cougar snorted softly, winding his arms around Jensen’s waist, ignoring the twinge in his ribs as he stretched. “Have we met?”

“Murderer.” Jensen kissed him again. “You’re not a murderer. It’s not the same, deciding it yourself and following orders. I know you.”

Jensen had a point. The reason that Cougar could do what he did so easily was that he was the weapon. If he made the decision for himself, he might lose that. Giving up that control was part of what made him so good at what he did.

“I trust you. If you say no, it’s no. If it’s yes...”

“You’ll kill a man for me?” Jensen’s lips brushed Cougar’s as he spoke.

“One. Ten.” Cougar kissed him hard. “Every last one.”

“He has a file on my sister,” Jensen said quietly. “Kill him. I’ll wipe him out of the world in every other way.”

Cougar had worried that love would make him soft. Instead it was like plunging a red-hot blade into cool water. It quenched some of the fire, yes, but it left hard steel. He’d never felt so cold. He was going to take Max’s head off with that steel. His only regret was that Max wouldn’t know why.

“Then I hope he’s having a good day,” Cougar said. “Hate to make a bad day worse for a guy.”

“It probably makes me a bad person that I want you the way I do right now.” Jensen’s voice had a raw edge that brought a chill up on Cougar’s skin.

“We’re bad people together.” Cougar kissed him hard. “When this is done, I promise.” For now, he had to disentangle them without losing his clothes, which seemed almost inevitable, and get Jensen a coffee. The physical separation was the only thing that would get his head into the same neighbourhood as sanity.

Jensen handed out the earbuds again when they were all around the ashes of the fire, checking their weapons. “There’s two channels on these. One’s secure. One’s not. The secure channel doesn’t have the range, but Max isn’t going to pick it up. It hears both channels, it’ll switch if you tell it to--‘change to channel two’.”

“Fancy.” Clay slipped his in.

“Yeah, well, I’m not just a pretty face,” Jensen said dryly.

“You’re pretty everything,” Aisha said, winking at Jensen. “What?” She gave Clay an innocent look when he glared at her, then leaned over to kiss him. “Don’t worry, _papi_. I don’t like pretty much.”

“Well. _I’m_  safe, then.” Pooch exhaled dramatically.

“You fuckers.” Clay got to his feet with some effort and stretched. “Let’s get on this thing, work out how to screw up Max’s day. Jensen, I need you with me and Pooch. Aisha, go with Cougar.”

Disappointing, but not surprising. Aisha was fast and agile, she wasn’t big enough to help Pooch out the way she’d need to at the rive crossing. Cougar stole a kiss while helping Jensen get his pack on.

“Almost over.”

They split up before crossing the river. The terrain didn’t allow easy travel for Aisha and Cougar on the far side and Clay thought he remembered a bridge upstream. The others were going downstream to cross the smaller rivers below the fork.

The day was brutal long before the sun was at the zenith. The jungle itself seemed to be fighting them, both Cougar and Aisha had blades out for over an hour before they got clear to lope along the river’s edge. Sweat stung Cougar’s bloody hands, Aisha’s bare arms were covered in welts. Still, they made good time once they were moving freely. She was a good travelling companion, quiet and clever.

Clay had been right about the bridge, though there was only the bare bones of it left. The supports were just a hand wide but Cougar and Aisha crossed it with ease, then followed a ridge up around the site to get a good view of the place.

“Think we’ll be here tonight?” Aisha was up a tree, scanning for any sign of the others.

“Could be.” Cougar didn’t track time when he was waiting for a shot. The day he was really in that much of a hurry to end a person’s life, just for his own convenience, was the day he hoped he’d quit. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Why?” She looked strangely suspicious. “Did Jensen say something?”

“No. But he was carrying half again as much as he should have.”

“That little shit,” she grumbled. “I didn’t ask him to.”

“You don’t have to.” Cougar tested out a level patch of ground, sprawling there on his belly. “He’ll just do it.”

“He’s a good guy. You’re lucky.” She slithered down to join him on the ground. “If you want to rest, we’ll know when Max comes in.”

At dawn, after eighteen hours, nearly consecutively, in the same place, Cougar was somewhere else entirely in his head. Everything shifted once he’d been waiting on a shot long enough. He did his best work like this. Distant and cool. He remembered Jensen as though he’d been dreaming.

When Max’s plane cruised in for a landing, Cougar didn’t even look up. He was aware of the disembarking happening, he could hear Clay speaking in his ear but his mind dismissed it. The only thing that cut through was the spike of adrenaline when Max walked into his sights. He had to breathe through it.

“You’re going to kill him,” Aisha said in his ear. “Cougar, are you...” She didn’t get to finish the sentence.

“Hold the shot, please.” Cougar recognized the voice, knew he didn’t have a face to go with it, but he’d heard it before. “I’m afraid it’d be inconvenient for me if you killed the target of my investigation, Sergeant Alvarez.”

In the background, he heard Jensen say something about tracking the signal, telling Clay there was no way that his signal could have been compromised.

“I can’t hear you, I can only broadcast. I hope that’s some consolation, Captain. I have nothing but respect for your work. Really, this is excellent.”

“Clay?” That was Aisha.

“I know this is a surprise, Colonel. I’d appreciate a word.”

“Change to channel two,” Clay ordered. “Who the hell is this?”

“I don't expect you to place my voice, of course, Colonel. You'll remember when you see me, though. It’s been a long time. Good to see you in one piece. You as well, Sergeant Porteous. Congratulations on the birth of your son. Ms. Al-Fadhil, I hope you’re feeling better. It’s unfortunate that it won’t last, but maybe we can do something about that.”

The air shook against Cougar’s skin before his ears registered the sound of helicopter blades. “I should be there shortly,” the man said. “I have a proposition for you all. However, I do need your target alive.”

Cougar put the rifle down. There was so much chaos going on down on the airstrip, he couldn’t have taken the shot if he’d wanted to. “No shot.”


	30. The New Order (#5. Sharing Toys)

A sturdy green Chinook dropped down onto the airstrip, a steel-grey Osprey made a low pass and landed at the far end. Out on the airstrip around Max’s plane and from the work camp at the telescope site, there was a pitiful attempt at repelling the invasion being stifled by a flawlessly-choreographed quartet of black Little Birds and the troops piling out of the Chinook.

“Why don’t you join me down here, gentlemen and lady. Your chariot awaits and your seats are reserved.”

The rotor blades of the six helicopters made the air and ground shake as though everything was standing atop a giant subwoofer. The sound and the feel made Jensen oddly homesick. The voice on the radio just made him feel queasy. Clay looked just as unwell. Clammy. He ran a hand over his face as he took in the offer.

“Damn,” Pooch muttered to Jensen. “I would love one of those.”

“I hate flying commercial,” Jensen had to admit. He wasn’t going to move until Clay gave the all-clear but their options were looking very, very scanty.

“What are you going to do with Max?” Next to Jensen, Clay got to his feet and shouldered his pack.

“I think it’s time he served a different purpose,” the man said. “What is it that they say? If you can’t be a good example, you might at least serve as a terrible warning.”

“And us?”

Jensen wanted to see Cougar’s face right now, to know what he was thinking. This could change everything. None of them had counted on working for anyone again.

“You’ll have everything you need. I’ve got a stockpile of toys I’m just dying to share with the right people. You’ll be situated quite comfortably. How are you enjoying this region? We happen to have an estate in Columbia I’m sure will be to your liking. Ms. Al-Fadhil will almost certainly recognize it.” Jensen heard the sharp intake of Aisha’s breath.

The voice went on, smooth without being oily. In spite of himself, Jensen liked this one far better than Max. “Your ranks will be restored, your pay increased and of course you’ll be compensated for your troubles. Your families will be protected. Your medical needs will be taken care of--awkward thing, polonium poisoning. One does have to admire Max’s innovation.”

Clay’s head snapped around and Jensen didn’t have time to cover up the look he knew was all over his face. “You knew? You didn’t tell me?” Clay had Jensen up against a tree with a crack that was Jensen’s head hitting the trunk. He only felt it from a distance, he was locked into Clay’s furious black stare.

“We couldn’t do anything until we tagged Max,” he said evenly, his own voice faint in his ears. “She’s got at least twelve days left in the grace period. She asked me not to say anything until we were done. If we’d gotten her treatment, he’d have found us and then we’d all be dead.”

“Let him go.” Cougar’s voice was flat and, out of the corner of his eye, Jensen saw the flash of sunrise off a scope.

“My, this is fascinating,” the voice said, the smug tones laid over the dying shots of a firefight.

“Fuck you,” they all said at once.

Clay let Jensen go slowly. “I was taking care of her,” Jensen said gently, loosening Clay’s death grip on his vest.

“He was,” Aisha said. “I’ll be okay for now, Clay. Cougar, don’t shoot my man just because he’s mad at yours or I’ll have to stab you in the back. After that, I’m pretty sure I can take Pooch from here but Jensen would kill me straight up and then he’d be all on his own in the big bad world.”

“That would be bad.” Jensen turned toward where he’d seen the flash. Cougar could see him even if he couldn’t see Cougar. “What are we going to do?”

“Looks like they’re taking Max alive,” Pooch said indifferently. He had the binoculars and was watching the drama playing out on the airstrip. “Damn, the man just goes through human shields like tissues.”

“What do you want from us?” Clay gestured for them to get moving. Jensen shouldered his pack. They emerged into the ruddy light of a new day that crept across the airstrip; the wailing of the wounded, the bark of orders and guns, the slow thrum of helicopters filled the thick air like their theme song.

“Just what you’ve always done. For me, now.”

“Officially?”

Jensen could hear the smile in the man’s voice. “Define officially, Colonel. I’ll be your new handler. Same rules. Same army. You can call me Bob. Bob Paulson, if you’d like a second name. I always found one pretentious.”

“Same team?”

Jensen caught sight of Aisha and Cougar coming out of the trees on the far side of the air strip. The soldiers that had landed with Bob kept on taking care of business as though none of them were there at all.

“I’ve spoken to the CIA. Mrs. Porteous has expressed an interested in being reactivated and they’re willing to loan her to us.” Bob sounded pleased with himself. “She’ll be an excellent asset. And you’ll have a liason who will remain in Washington.”

“The liason?” Clay wanted to know. “CIA? A civilian?”

“Major, US Army,” Bob said smoothly. “A decorated veteran familiar with your work, willing to take on the role since his injuries prevent him from returning to the field. Only the best for my people.”

“Seriously?” Cougar said, glaring at Pooch across the twenty yards that separated them now. “CIA?”

“Hey.” Pooch shrugged his good shoulder. “I said I met her on assignment. Didn’t say what she was doing.”

“Can I assume that you’ve decided to take me up on my offer, then?” The voice didn’t just come over the earbuds now, it drifted their way on the air. A man stood at the bottom of the Osprey’s loading ramp, dressed in an elegant suit made of wool the same colour as the carrier. He greeted them with a wave of his cane.

Bob was older, light-skinned, silver-haired, a little heavy, with a sly, weathered face. He waited for the answer, hands folded on the silver head of his cane.

“Wait.” Clay pulled out his earbud and tossed it to Jensen, gesturing to the others to do the same. “Well?”

“If he keeps our families safe, I’m in,” Pooch said. “We don’t have a lot of choice.”

“There isn’t a choice.” Jensen hated it, hated that they were going to have to go back to serving, as much as he’d liked it when they’d be in. There wouldn’t be any outs. There wouldn’t be a lot of space for him and Cougar. “It’s not just the family Stateside. Aisha needs more help than we can get her anywhere else without getting caught. There’s nothing to discuss.”

Aisha gave him a wan smile and shrugged. “I’d just go myself, but I don’t think it’s me they want.”

“He’s right,” Cougar said, looking at Jensen. The three feet between them might as well have been miles. “We do this. For now. At least we know what he looks like. We’re ahead already.” He didn’t take his eyes off Jensen but the threat was clear. “Clay. Get her on the plane. Pooch, too.”

“Jolene is gonna kill me,” Pooch muttered as he turned away to make the walk to the Osprey. He passed between Jensen and Cougar like a man walking to his execution. “Can’t wait to see her again.”

“I’m sorry, Clay,” Aisha said quietly.

“It’s not on you.” Clay slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in. “Next time you’re dying, tell me, okay?”

“If I don’t, you can kill me.” She leaned into Clay as he turned them toward the Osprey. “See you on the plane, boys.”

“Your gear, sir?” A soldier intercepted Clay to take his pack. Another one materialized in the periphery of Jensen to take the pack he carried. Cougar relinquished his pack but not his gun. They were back in the family now.

“You ready to go?” Jensen shoved his hands in his pockets. It felt like saying goodbye. Cougar tilted his hat up, tilted his head back to get a good look at Jensen’s face.

“You?”

Jensen’s mind went back to their apartment, to the roaches on the dirty green tile of the bathroom, to the springs of the couch digging into his back, to Cougar’s blisters and sweat-stiff work clothes, the tired bend of his back, the unrelenting heat, the sirens and the guns and the crying of children. Cougar’s mouth on his, Cougar’s breath on his skin, the soft nape of Cougar’s neck and the silk of his hair. That was then. This was now. They were soldiers again.

“Yeah.” No. It hurt to say the word. “Shouldn’t keep the new boss waiting. Let’s go.” He took a breath and willed himself to turn away.

“It’s been good.” Cougar was a shadow at the edge of Jensen’s vision as they made the walk to join the others.

“Go straight on toward the front once you’re on board, gentlemen.” Bob gave them both a pleasant smile as he passed them on his way to where the soldiers had Max cuffed and kneeling in the dust.

“I’d do it again.” Jensen didn’t want to go, didn’t want to put his back to something he’d been so happy having but they kept moving.

The cabin just aft of the Osprey cockpit was far nicer than the carrier section. Upholstered seats, cool air, carpet, a fridge with cold drinks visible through the glass door. It felt wrong to be up here in Bob’s domain. Pooch was sprawled in a seat with his feet up on the table, talking to someone on his headset. The screen on the wall beside him showed Jolene looking mildly unimpressed. Jensen knew that look. She was bitching him out for breaking bones.

A medic bent over Aisha, taking vials of her blood. Clay hovered next to her, his arm around her shoulders. Now that the choice had been made, how he felt about her surfaced, and Jensen was relieved to see it. The man was trying so hard not to screw up the way he had when they’d lost Roque, he was on the verge of losing Aisha. She put her head on his shoulder, turning away as the medic slid the vials of her blood into a case; Clay kissed her hair, stroked her cheek, and said something to her in a low voice. _It’ll be okay_. Jensen didn’t have to hear it to know.

It’ll be okay. It would be. They’d get by. Wherever they went, they’d be together. A team. And he and Cougar, well, it had been good. He’d do it again. He slid into a couch in the corner and dropped his computer bag at his feet.

“We’ll be headed for our base Columbia in five minutes.” One of the pilots, a young woman, looked in from the cockpit. “Your orders are there.” She pointed to a thin silver tablet on the table by Clay. “Mr. Paulson will be remaining for now.”

Cougar dropped his gun across the table in front of Jensen and sprawled next to him, boots up next to his gun. “Talk,” he said.

“I’m working on breathing,” Jensen admitted. “That’s all I’ve got.” He already missed Cougar so much his bones hurt. He had his phone in hands, turning it over and over. He wasn’t even sure when he’d taken it out. He wanted it to have some kind of answer for him, something that would fix this.

“Listen, then.” Cougar tossed his hat on the table with his gun, then leaned forward to shake his hair out of its braid. It was everything Jensen could do not to touch him. “I’m not done. We’re not.” He held up a finger before Jensen could bring up why they shouldn’t keep this going. Couldn’t. “I’m talking.”

Jensen closed his mouth and put the phone down on the table, dropped his sunglasses next to them, put his elbows on his knees, mirroring Cougar’s pose. He could feel eyes on him, Pooch had stopped talking, Clay and Aisha were silent. The blades of the Osprey started up but everything else was holding its breath. He couldn’t see Cougar’s face through the curtain of his hair, could only see Cougar’s beautiful, scarred hands turned palms up as though they were full of something invisible.

“I love you,” Cougar said and it was so unexpected that Jensen didn’t hear it so much as he felt the air move and the world tilt--it wasn’t just the Osprey lifting off. “I’m not done. Neither are you. Anyone who has a problem with it needs to remember who we are and what we do.” He looked up and Jensen followed his gaze to the faces of their friends, to the expressions that ranged from Pooch’s impatient amusement to Aisha’s knowing tenderness to Clay’s stern acceptance. “Understand?”

“Yeah.” Jensen could barely get the word out as he leaned over to put his arm around Cougar, to bury his face in Cougar’s hair and breathe in the smell of home. “I love you, too,” he said, muffled.

“I know.” Cougar put a hand on his thigh. “Today. Tomorrow. Day after. Day after that.”

Jensen exhaled and leaned back, taking Cougar with him until they were sprawled in each other’s arms with Cougar’s head on his shoulder. “Works for me. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to #antidiogenes chat on IRC and those who have been reading along. Salute to the music of Brother Ali, P.O.S., and Doomtree for being the fuel for my mind while I worked. 
> 
> Next up, edits and missing scenes. This will remain as is and the edited version posted separately. 
> 
> It's been a great ride, y'all.
> 
> E. Winter Grey


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